The Studio Crime: A Golden Age Mystery

by Ianthe Jerrold, Curtis Evans

Overview

Description "He is dead. It is quite impossible that he should have killed himself. He has been murdered. About half an hour ago. By a long knife passed under the left shoulder-blade into the heart."On a fog-bound London night, a soirée is taking place in the studio of artist Laurence Newtree. The guests include an eminent psychiatrist, a wealthy philanthropist and an observant young friend of Newtree's, John Christmas. Before the evening is over, Newtree's neighbour is found stabbed to death in what appears to be an impossible crime. But a mysterious man in a fez has been spotted in the fog asking for highly unlikely directions...The resourceful John Christmas takes on the case, unofficially, leading to an ingenious solution no one could have expected, least of all Inspector Hembrow of Scotland Yard.The Studio Crime is the first of Ianthe Jerrold's classic whodunit novels, originally published in 1929. Its impact led to her membership of the elite Detection Club, and its influence can be felt on later works by John Dickson Carr, Ngaio Marsh and Dorothy L. Sayers among others.This edition, the first in over eighty years, features a new introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.Praise for The Studio Crime"The best out of a new batch of detective stories." J.B. Priestley in The Evening News"Very carefully constructed, is very well written, and keeps its secret until the end." The Morning Post"Can be most heartily recommended to those who like a good mystery story written in good English." Newcastle Chronicle"The book is a pleasantly written record of an admirable piece of detective work." Times Literary Supplement

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781910570296
Publisher:	Dean Street Press
Publication date:	05/04/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	300
File size:	825 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Ianthe Jerrold was born in 1898, the daughter of the well-known author and journalist Walter Jerrold, and granddaughter of the Victorian playwright Douglas Jerrold. She was the eldest of five sisters.

She published her first book, a work of verse, at the age of fifteen. This was the start of a long and prolific writing career characterized by numerous stylistic shifts. In 1929 she published the first of two classic and influential whodunits. The Studio Crime gained her immediate acceptance into the recently-formed but highly prestigious Detection Club, and was followed a year later by Dead Man’s Quarry.

Ianthe Jerrold subsequently moved on from pure whodunits to write novels ranging from romantic fiction to psychological thrillers. She continued writing and publishing her fiction into the 1970’s. She died in 1977, twelve years after her husband George Menges. Their Elizabethan farmhouse Cwmmau was left to the National Trust.

Curtis Evans, Ph.D. is the author of Masters of the "Humdrum" Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920-1961 (McFarland Press, 2012) and Clues and Corpses: The Detective Fiction and Mystery Criticism of Todd Downing (Coachwhip Press, 2013). He has written extensively about crime and mystery fiction for CADS: Crime and Detective Stories and Mystery*File and also at his own blog, The Passing Tramp.