Richard Sale had a successful Hollywood career as a screenwriter and to a lesser extent as a director. He wrote several crime novels and not surprisingly used Hollywood as a setting. Benefit Performance, published in 1946, is a particularly good example.

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I read a lot of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple mysteries years ago. I haven’t read any for ages. I must revisit some of them.

So, what are your three favourite Miss Marple stories?

favourite Poirot stories

What are your three favourite Poirot stories?

Headed for a Hearse was the second of five crime novels featuring private detective William Crane written by Jonathan Latimer (1906-1983). Latimer would go on to write some of the classic film noir screenplays, including The Glass Key, The Big Clock, Night Has a Thousand Eyes and The Unholy Wife.

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Henry Wade’s The Duke of York’s Steps was published in 1929 and it’s a fine example of the golden age detective tale.

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H. C. Bailey (1878-1961) was regarded in his lifetime as one of the giants of the detective fiction genre, a name comparable to Christie or Sayers. For some odd reason his reputation has not lasted as well as that of most of his contemporaries. Bailey created several fictional detectives, the best-known being Reginald Fortune. After producing countless Mr Fortune short stories in 1934 he finally published his first Mr Fortune novel, Shadow on the Wall.

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This sounds like reasonably good news -Amazon publishing Leslie Charteris & Gladys Mitchell. I don't care about the digital format but it would be nice to see the Saint novels in paperback.

Anna Katharine Green’s 1878 novel The Leavenworth Case is often cited, incorrectly, as the first mystery novel written by a woman. It is nonetheless definitely a mystery novel and certainly one of the earliest to be written by a woman. The crime fiction genre itself was still relatively speaking in its infancy at the time this novel was published.

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Edmund Crispin's Frequent Hearses is a highly entertaining murder mystery set against the background of a movie studio.

I know there have been quite a few crime novels that have used movie studios as a setting. What are your favourite examples of this sub-genre in vintage crime?

We’ve talked about fictional sleuths inspired by real-life detectives. What about crime novels inspired by real-life crimes? Are there any notable examples of this in the annals of vintage crime?