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Chesterton wrote that “the only thrill, even of a common thriller, is concerned somehow with the conscience and the will.” Those words have beenpart of my credo as a writer. They may not be framed and on my desk but they are never out of my mind.
    In
Bloody Murder
, published in 1972, revised in 1985 and again in 1992, a book which has become essential reading for many aficionados of crime fiction, Julian Symons suggests that because of their richness, no more than a few Father Brown short stories should be read at a time. Certainly to settle down for an evening with Father Brown would be like facing a meal composed entirely of very rich
hors d’œuvres
, but I have never suffered from literary indigestion when reading the stories, partly because of Chesterton’s imaginative power and his all-embracing humanity. At the end of the short story “The Invisible Man” we are told that Flambeau and the other participants in the mystery went back to their ordinary lives. “But Father Brown walked those snow-covered hills under the stars for many hours with a murderer, and what they said to each other will never be known.” We can be sure that, whatever was spoken, it had little or nothing to do with the criminal justice system.

    “Your red herring. My Lord.”

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The Golden Age
    When one looks at the Golden Age in retrospect the developing rebellion against its ideas and standards is clearly visible, but this is the wisdom of hindsight, for during the thirties the classical detective story burgeoned with new and considerable talents almost every year.
    Julian Symons
, Bloody Murder
    A VICTORIAN CRITIC of the Sherlock Holmes stories, writing in
Blackwood’s Magazine
in the late 1800s, while not altogether dismissive of the saga, concluded with the words: “Considering the difficulty of hitting on any fancies that are decently fresh, surely this sensational business must shortly come to a close.” No prophecy could have been more misjudged. Not only did the sensational business continue, but the new century saw an outburst of creative energy directed towards detective fiction, the emergence of new talented writers and apublic which greeted their efforts with an avid enthusiasm which contemporary cartoons suggest amounted to a craze. Although short stories continued to be written, gradually they gave way to the detective novel. One reason for this change was probably because the writers and their increasingly enthusiastic readers preferred a longer narrative, which gave opportunities for even more complicated plotting and more fully developed characters. In the words of G. K. Chesterton, “The long story is more successful, perhaps, in one not unimportant point: that it is possible to realise that a man is alive before he is dead.” Novelists, too, if visited by a powerful idea for an original method of murder, detective or plotline, were unwilling—and indeed still are—to dissipate it on a short story when it could both inspire and form the main interest of a successful novel.
    The well-known description “Golden Age” is commonly taken to cover the two decades between the First and Second World Wars, but this limitation is unduly restrictive. One of the most famous detective stories regarded as falling within the Golden Age is
Trent’s Last Case
by E. C. Bentley, published in 1913. The name of this novel is familiar to many readers who have neverread it, and its importance is partly due to the respect with which it was regarded by practitioners of the time and its influence on the genre. Dorothy L. Sayers wrote that it “holds a very special place in the history of detective fiction, a tale of unusual brilliance and charm, startlingly original.” Agatha Christie saw it as “one of the three best detective stories ever written.” Edgar Wallace described it as “a masterpiece of detective fiction,” and G. K. Chesterton saw it as “the finest detective story of modern times.” Today some of the tributes