Golden Age authors & characters living on

I recently posted this brief article about follow-ups to the Queens of Crime, written by modern authors, on my library's Facebook page:

Fans of the Golden Age queens of crime: Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L Sayers, Margery Allingham and Josephine Tey may like to know that their characters and indeed lives carry on in a number of recent books.

Agatha Christie’s infamous 11 day disappearance in 1926 when she absconded to Harrogate has never been officially explained and she does not refer to it in her autobiography. Was it illness after the death of her mother or revenge on her philandering husband that prompted her flight? Or was it due to aliens as postulated by the Doctor Who episode, The Unicorn and the Wasp (available on iPlayer)? The Channel 5 film, Agatha & The Truth of Murder, now available on Netflix, also looks at this event. In books, rather than television, we have Andrew Wilson’s crime series featuring Agatha as the main character which begins with A TALENT FOR MURDER and has another and more sinister take on her disappearance.

If you can’t get enough of Christie’s most famous detective, Hercule Poirot, then you’ll be pleased to know that Sophie Hannah has brought him back to life in a series of books beginning with THE MONOGRAM MURDERS.

Ngaio Marsh’s debonair sleuth Roderick Alleyn returns for one last case in THE MONEY IN THE MORGUE a novel begun and abandoned by Marsh, but now completed by Stella Duffy.

Jill Paton Walsh took up the Lord Peter Wimsey mantle back in 1998 when she was invited to complete Dorothy L Sayers’s THRONES, DOMINATIONS. She has written another Wimsey book based on clues left by Sayers, plus two more from her own ideas.

Margery Allingham is probably best known for her Albert Campion series, televised in 1989/90 starring Peter Davison. Her husband, Pip Youngman Carter, continued the Campion series with two book and an unfinished one which has recently been completed by Mike Ripley as MR CAMPION’S FAREWELL. Ripley has gone on to write six more original Campion novels.

And finally Josephine Tey stars in a series of crime novels by Nicola Upson. As Gordon Daviot, Tey (real name Elizabeth MacKintosh), wrote plays including the hit ‘Richard of Bordeaux’ which starred John Gielgud. And it is this play which forms the backdrop to the first book in Upson’s series, AN EXPERT IN MURDER. In a later book in the series, FEAR IN THE SUNLIGHT, Tey is mixing with the Hitchcocks at Portmeirion.

Dorothy L Sayers - Audiobooks

I've recently received a press release from Hodder and Stoughton announcing new audiobook recording for all of Dorothy L Sayers books, starting with the release of Whose Body? tomorrow:

Hodder & Stoughton will publish the complete crime backlist of Dorothy L. Sayers as digital audiobooks. World rights excluding the USA were acquired from Georgia Glover of David Higham Associates.

Editor Dominic Gribben said: "Dorothy L. Sayers is one of the great authors of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction and a cornerstone of Hodder’s crime fiction publishing. We’re recording new editions – brilliantly read by Jane McDowell – to offer listeners a fresh, consistent way to experience these stories.”

Hodder will publish 16 titles over the course of the next year beginning with the first Lord Peter Wimsey novel, Whose Body?, on September 18th 2014. Hodder will publish one title a month with the final title being published in December 2015.

A New Lord Peter Wimsey Novel

The new Hodder catalogue has arrived today with details of a new Lord Peter Wimsey novel by Jill Paton Walsh. The Late Scholar will be published on 5 December 2013. This will be Jill Paton Walsh's fourth Peter Wimsey, the previous three had varying degrees of input from Wimsey's originator Dorothy L Sayers from half a book (Thrones, Dominations), some letters (A Presumption of Death) to the mention of a case (The Attenbury Emeralds).

The blurb from the catalogue:

Peter Wimsey is pleased to discover that along with a Dukedom he has inherited the duties of 'visitor' at an Oxford college. When the fellows appeal to him to resolve a dispute, he and Harriet set off happily to spend some time in Oxford.

But the dispute turns out to be embittered. The voting is evenly balanced between two passionate parties - evenly balanced, that is, until several of the fellows unexpectedly die.

The Warden has a casting vote, but the Warden has disappeared. And the causes of death of the deceased fellows bear an uncanny resemblance to the murder methods in Peter's past cases - methods that Harriet has used in her published novels...

New Peter Wimsey novel

Jill Paton Walsh mentioned to this at last year's Harrogate Crime Writer's Festival - that she was working on a third Wimsey novel. The news is confirmed today at BookBrunch, though the finished result won't be available until autumn 2010:

Hodder has bought THE ATTENBURY EMERALDS, Jill Paton Walsh’s third Lord Peter Wimsey novel, from Bruce Hunter of David Higham Associates on behalf of the estate of Dorothy L Sayers. The story is set after World War II, but its roots go back to 1921 and Lord Peter Wimsey’s first case, in which the Attenbury Emeralds were stolen – a mystery alluded to by Sayers in a number of novels but never resolved.

The Sayers’ trustees asked Paton Walsh, who was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for her novel Knowledge of Angels, to complete an unfinished Sayers’ story, Thrones, Dominations, which had been found in the offices of her agent. It was published in 1998 to considerable acclaim, and was a Sunday Times bestseller. Like that novel, The Attenbury Emeralds will follow closely Sayers’ own writing about Lord Peter Wimsey, as told in her 11 novels and five collections of short stories. Publication is scheduled for autumn 2010.

As well as completing Thrones, Dominations, Walsh also wrote A Presumption of Death which was based on Dorothy L Sayers' letters.