Gentleman Detective - Gentlemen Detectives From The Golden Age

Gentlemen Detectives From The Golden Age

The renowned crime writers of the Golden Age were mostly British and mostly women. They all produced at least one gentleman detective. Their books featuring these characters are still generally in print.

• Hercule Poirot first appeared in 1920, in Agatha Christie's first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. He was immensely popular during the Golden Age of detective fiction becoming the most famous detective since Sherlock Holmes. He appeared in 33 novels, one play, and more than 50 short stories published between 1920 and 1975 and set in the same era. Poirot was Chief of Police of Brussels, until "the Great War" (WWI) forced him to leave for England. It was there that he met his longtime friend Arthur Hastings, who went on to accompany him on many cases. Throughout his career, he solved many cases across Europe, occasionally undertaking cases for the British government and Secret Service, including foiling the attempted abduction of the British Prime Minister. Poirot operates as a fairly conventional detective, depending on logic, which is represented by two common phrases he uses: his use of "the little grey cells" and "order and method". Poirot is occasionally assisted by his secretary, Miss Felicity Lemon, and friend Chief Inspector Japp, of Scotland Yard. Poirot's appearance is of a short, dignified man. His head is exactly the shape of an egg, with a stiff and military-like moustache. His attire consists of a three-piece suit, accompanied by a pocketwatch, spats, patent leather shoes and a pair of pince-nez. He also wears a "Tussie-mussie" lapel pin he received as a gift in The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

• Lord Peter Wimsey was the creation of Dorothy L. Sayers. Wimsey is an archetype for British gentlemen detectives. Reputedly born in 1890, he first appeared in Whose Body? (1923), the first of 11 chronological novels and several collections of short stories. This former army officer is a purely amateur sleuth, and is unquestionably an English gentleman. He is polished, aristocratic, wealthy, deliberately eccentric, and the younger brother of a duke. Wimsey is extremely clever, though he usually tries to hide it. As shown in Have His Carcase (1932), Wimsey is a competent cryptanalyst, like both the earlier Dupin and Sherlock Holmes. Again like Holmes, Wimsey is physically brave (despite being physically small), and is competent with his fists (Clouds of Witness, 1926). Wimsey is notably eccentric in manner; this is most evident in the first five novels. As Sayers' work progress and as Wimsey ages, he rounds out and mellows greatly. At age 45 he marries Harriet Vane, a crime writer. According to Barbara Reynolds, her friend and biographer, Sayers remarked that Lord Peter began as a mixture of Fred Astaire and Bertie Wooster. She claimed that she had developed the "husky voiced, dark-eyed" Harriet to put an end to Lord Peter via matrimony. Vane features in two further novels (Have His Carcase, 1932, & Gaudy Night, 1935) before agreeing to marry Wimsey. In the course of writing these novels, Sayers gave Lord Peter and Harriet so much life that she was never able to, as she put it, "see Lord Peter exit the stage." In an essay by one of her Golden Age rivals, Ngaio Marsh (see below), Sayers is accused of having 'fallen in love' with Wimsey.

• Albert Campion first appeared in 1929, and was created by Margery Allingham as a parody of Sayers' detective Lord Peter Wimsey, 'Albert Campion' is supposedly the pseudonym used by a man who was born in 1900 into a prominent British aristocratic family. He was educated at Totham School and the (fictitious) St. Ignatius' College, Cambridge (according to a mini-biography included in Sweet Danger, 1933). Ingenious, resourceful and well-educated, in his 20s he assumed the name Campion and began a life as an adventurer and detective. As Allingham's work progressed, Campion established his own identity. He first appeared as a supporting character in The Crime at Black Dudley (1929), an adventure story involving a ring of criminals, and would go on to feature in another 17 novels and over 20 short stories.

• Roderick Alleyn first appeared in 1934, the creation of a New Zealander, Ngaio Marsh, who was then living in London. Alleyn featured in a chronological series of 32 detective novels, which finished as late as 1982. He was apparently born around 1893, schooled at Eton, graduated from Oxford around 1915, served in the army for three years in World War I, then spent a year (1919-1920) in the British Foreign Service. He finally joined the Metropolitan Police as a constable in about 1920 or 1921. When the series opens, Alleyn is aged about 40 and is already a Chief Detective-Inspector in the CID at Scotland Yard. As the series progresses, Alleyn marries and has a son, and eventually rises to the rank of Chief Superintendent.

• Alleyn is a thoroughly professional policeman, but socially is very like Wimsey. Both were reputedly educated first at Eton, and later at Oxford. (Being only three or so years apart, they perhaps should have known each other.) Both detectives eventually marry and have children; in each case their wife is a former murder suspect. As depicted by Marsh, Alleyn's family is similar to that created by Sayers for her Wimsey. Like Wimsey, Alleyn has a titled older brother, who however is much less grand (merely a baronet rather than a duke). Like Wimsey, Alleyn's titled brother is less intelligent and more conventional than his more famous younger sibling. Alleyn's mother, Lady Alleyn, closely resembles in manner Wimsey's mother, the Dowager Duchess of Denver. Both ladies are affable, intelligent, and strongly support (and perhaps prefer) their younger sons. One marked difference between the fictional biographies of Alleyn and Wimsey, who are about the same age, is in their supposed military service during World War I. Alleyn's army service is glossed over and never discussed, whereas Wimsey's distinguished service on the Western Front has mentally scarred him for life. Another difference is that Wimsey deliberately cultivates his aristocratic eccentricities (inter alia, he wears a monocle, delights in his Oxford accent, and collects incunabula), whereas Alleyn is not at all eccentric, and plays down his upper-class background.

• Miss Marple is one of the two great detective creations of Agatha Christie, the best known of all the Golden Age writers. Miss Marple is an amiable elderly spinster who first appeared in 1927. Her detective feats are largely based on her profound knowledge of human nature, gained (she maintains) from closely observing life in her small village. The daughter of a clergyman, she is not from the aristocracy or landed gentry, but is quite at home amongst them. Miss Marple would probably have been happy to describe herself as a gentlewoman. Christie had a rather upper-class background herself: she grew up in a large house with servants, with a father rich enough not to work, a private education, and many country house parties before World War 1. In her autobiography, Christie stated that she partly based Miss Marple upon her grandmother and her friends.

• Mr. Satterthwaite is one of Christie's lesser known amateur detectives. This charming, elderly gentleman only appears in The Mysterious Mr. Quin (1930) and Three Act Tragedy (1934). He is physically small, highly cultivated, an inveterate snob with a taste for duchesses, and is wealthy besides. By way of contrast, Christie's most famous detective character (Hercule Poirot) is a foreigner, and is thus outside the English class system. Poirot takes full advantage of this sublety, not least in Three Act Tragedy in which he catches a serial killer with Mr. Satterthwaite's assistance.

• Arsène Lupin, the French "gentleman thief" who debuted in 1905, may just as well be considered a gentleman detective.