The stock detective of golden age detective fiction is definitely an amateur. It's someone at the country house party who has the role of sleuth thrust upon them by circumstance, or a person with known criminological interests who has built up a reputation for repeatedly solving crimes simply
Caroline: Reading crime fiction is about curiosity and the desire for knowledge. We start each book with no idea what has happened in the story's pivotal scenario and, at least in the certainty-orientated golden age tradition from the interwar years, by the end we will know all about
Caroline: One of the great pleasures of golden age detective fiction, I think, is that some of its best writers were very prolific. It makes it easy to fall down a bibliography shaped rabbit hole. You liked your first Agatha Christie? Don't worry, there are at least sixty
