William Underhill (1918-1988) was an Englishman who wrote quite a bit of detective fiction, including the five Mordecai Tremaine mysteries published between 1947 and 1954 under the pseudonym Francis Duncan. These five books have been reissued in handsome paperback editions by Vintage Books. The last of them was Behold a Fair Woman.

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The American Gun Mystery appeared in 1933 and was the sixth of the Ellery Queen mysteries. And it’s a rather controversial one among fans of golden age detective fiction.

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The Mystery of Mr Mock (the US title was The Corpse with the Floating Foot) was written in 1937 by R.A.J. Walling and of course features private detective Philip Tolefree.

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Mystery at Lynden Sands, published in 1928, is one of J. J. Connington’s earlier mysteries featuring Chief Constable Sir Clinton Driffield. Driffield is having a pleasant holiday at the seaside and of course as any fan of mystery fiction knows when a detective decides to take a holiday murder is sure to follow him.

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John T. McIntyre (1871-1951) was a Philadelphia-born American writer who achieved considerable success only to fade into obscurity shortly after his death. He wrote hard-boiled novels, including several in the private eye genre. Early in his career he wrote four novels featuring amateur detective Ashton-Kirk, the first of them (in 1910) being Ashton-Kirk Investigator.

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I've reviewed John Rhode's excellent 1937 mystery Death on the Board on my book blog. Here's the link to the review.

The Saint vs Scotland Yard (originally published as The Holy Terror in 1932) is a collection of three novellas featuring Simon Templar, the Saint. My review can be found here.

The Second World War is never explicitly mentioned in Agatha Christie’s One, Two, Buckle My Shoe but it casts a long shadow over the book making it a rather interesting Hercule Poirot mystery.

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I’ve posted my thoughts on Erle Stanley Gardner's The Case of the Howling Dog on my Vintage Pop Fictions blog. You can find my review here.

Anthony Boucher was much better known as a critic but in the late 30s and early 40s he wrote a handful of very well-regarded detective novels. The most famous is perhaps The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars, published in 1940. The title would lead the reader to expect a Sherlock Holmes pastiche but this book is actually something very different, and far more interesting.

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