[sic] and deep regret.’ I thought it would look well and be a bit of publicity.’
In January 1931, Berkeley suggested that Club members might put together a ‘Detection Annual’, modelled on the popular, though sporadically published, Printer’s Pie. Baroness Orczy was among those willing to contribute, but before long, this proposal was superseded by the concept of a full-length Detection Club novel, and the result was The Floating Admiral.
At the same time, Christie contemplated writing a novel set around a ‘Detective Story Club’ involving ‘13 at Dinner’. In one of her private notebooks, she listed the cast of characters. Sayers and her husband are included, alongside a mention of ‘Poisons’, as are Freeman Wills Crofts and his wife (‘Alibis’), Christie herself, John Rhode, Edmund Bentley, Douglas and Margaret Cole, and Clemence Dane. Anthony Berkeley (and his wife, which suggests the couple contrived to keep their matrimonial difficulties to themselves) also appeared on the list.
Christie adds the note ‘fantastic writer’ next to Berkeley’s name. The admiration they had for each other’s skill and originality with mystery plots was genuine and deeply felt. Perhaps because she feared she could not out-do The Poisoned Chocolates Case, Christie never pursued the story idea. The sinister implications of an unlucky number of dinner guests were, however, soon realized in Lord Edgware Dies, the American title of which was Thirteen at Dinner. The other writer named on the list in her journal was the American S. S. Van Dine. This was odd, since Van Dine was never a member of the Detection Club. He had, however, visited England not long before, and may have been invited to one of Berkeley’s dinners as a guest. In later years, Christie jotted down an idea about her character Ariadne Oliver, a scatty detective novelist, attending a Detection Club dinner with guests. Murder was to take place when the Club’s initiation ritual began. It is a shame that she never developed this appealing idea.
On 1 May 1931, Berkeley wrote to tell Chesterton that a new member, Helen Simpson, was to be initiated in a ‘ceremonious ritual’ devised by Sayers. He thought the idea of giving solemn pledges to honour the values of fine detective writing would be amusing. This is the first recorded mention of the Detection Club’s initiation ritual.
Agatha Christie’s notebook 41: extract featuring a story idea based on the Detection Club (by permission of the Christie Archive Trust).
Club members took a strikingly modern approach to combining self-promotion with supporting a good cause, and four members collaborated in a fundraising event for a hospital charity on 31 May 1932. Berkeley (described in the publicity as the Club Secretary), Bentley, Crofts and Margaret Cole were subjected to a ‘mock trial’ at the London School of Economics, charged with ‘faking the evidence’ by a prosecuting barrister, with a King’s Counsel sitting in judgment.
Less than three months earlier, on 11 March, the Rules and Constitution of the Club had been adopted. They stated that the Club was instituted ‘for the association of writers of detective novels and for promoting and continuing a mutual fellowship between them.’ To promote the Club’s aims, the suitability of every candidate for membership was to be ‘fully and carefully examined’ to ensure that he or she had written ‘at least two detective novels of admitted merit or (in exceptional cases) one such novel; it being understood that the term ‘detective novel’ does not include adventure stories or “thrillers” or stories in which the detection is not the main interest, and that it is a demerit in a detective novel if the author does not “play fair” with the reader.’
Why exclude thriller writers? Christie and many other members wrote thrillers from time to time, and even Sayers had contemplated adding to the mountain of stories about Sexton Blake. The answer was that Sayers and her friends had no time for crude blood-and-thunder merchants. However, the rule did mean that Bentley’s old friend John Buchan, a pillar of the establishment and by a distance the most distinguished British thriller writer, was ineligible for membership, since none of his books could be classed as a detective novel.
In total there were twenty-three rules. They provided that a member who was guilty of a deliberate breach of the rules or damaged the Club’s interests was liable to expulsion. Nobody has ever been expelled, which shows the value of a rigorous approach to recruitment. By the time the Rules and Constitution came into force, there were twenty-eight members. The rules make no provision for ‘Associate Members’, yet Hugh Walpole and Helen Simpson have been described as such in the Club’s list of members. In the list for 1939–40, Walpole is described as an ‘Honorary Member’, as is Sir Norman Kendal, who was not a writer at all, and there is no suggestion that Simpson was not a full member. Presumably this untidiness is due to doubt as to whether Walpole’s psychological thrillers qualified as ‘detective novels’, despite his participation in the Behind the Screen project. Simpson was eminently qualified for full membership, whereas Kendal’s election was a goodwill gesture. One mystery is why the name of R. C. Woodthorpe, elected in 1935, has not appeared in the list of members for the last half-century. Was he thrown out, and his name expunged from the records, for some unspeakable transgression? The likeliest solution is that the omission of his name was a simple mistake.
The cover of Collins’ Crime Club newsletter for autumn 1939.
Two sample pages from Collins’ Crime Club newsletter.
The Crime Club News’ back page advertisement for Milward Kennedy’s reviews in the Sunday Times.
Despite the veneer of formality, nobody cared about inconsistencies of detail, as long as the Club’s core values were preserved. When creative people get together, sparks often fly, and that happened from time to time in the Detection Club. It was rare, though, for members to risk damage to their relationships through backbiting. They were excited by the prospect of exploiting the potential of the detective story. The mix of strong personalities and varied talents was a source of strength. Berkeley had the vision, Chesterton supplied gravitas, and Sayers led by energetic example. Her study of the history of detective fiction broke new ground, paying tribute to the contribution to the genre made by older members of the Club, and signalling how the modern writers could take it to fresh heights. Like any good detective, she knew that to understand the present, and what the future may hold, one needs to understand the past.
Notes to Chapter 6
The first person who set out to solve ‘the riddle of the Detection Club’ was Clair Price
See Clair Price, ‘A New Code for Crime between Covers’, New York Times, 24 July 1932.
Julian Symons, a historian as well as a crime writer of distinction and former Club President, mistakenly wrote that the Club started in 1932.
Symons said this in his introduction to Verdict of 13: A Detection Club Anthology (London, Faber, 1979), where
