Course Summary

The History of Mystery

Why do mysteries fascinate us?

Why has Sherlock Holmes continued to captivate readers generation after generation, while other fictional detectives of the Victorian period have been forgotten?

The 1920s and 30s are commonly known as the Golden Age of detective fiction

An American reaction, to the cosy conventionality of British murder mysteries, was the American hard-boiled school of crime writing

Over the decades, the detective story metamorphosed into the more general crime novel.

This has always been a genre that has attracted as many, if not more,  women writers as men

Can you work out the culprit in this witty short story?