I think this is my favourite novel from the 1940s. Published in 1944, this centres on a murder during the London blackout.

I love the range of books you’ve selected for us, shall we get straight to it? The first wartime mystery book you’ve selected for us is Checkmate to Murder by E.C.R. I know we’ve seen a spike in interest in romance, crime fiction and other ‘cosy’ books during the pandemic. What you said about escapist books finding popularity during stressful periods really rings true today. So I was interested to look at what happened at the end of the Golden Age.Ĭheckmate to Murder: A Second World War Mystery These books were really popular.Īs the war took hold, people really wanted to read what was called in newspaper reports of the time, the ‘Literature of Escape.’ And a lot of the queens of crime-the most popular writers in that genre at the time-were still very much writing and very popular. If you were a crime fiction fan in 1939, you wouldn’t have immediately thought: ‘Oh well, this genre is over.’ People still loved reading detective fiction. But that’s very much something that we’ve imposed. The Second World War is considered a hard stop. The ‘golden age’ of detective fiction is generally talked about as being between about 19, or 1940. This time, you’ve chosen five of the best wartime mystery books, having recently launched a new series of your critically-acclaimed podcast Shedunnit called ‘The Queens of Crime at War.’ Was the Second World War a particularly rich time for detective fiction? Let me start by welcoming you back to Five Books, Caroline previously you recommend us some classic Christmas mysteries. Foreign Policy & International Relations.

Second age total war