Читать книгу The Golden Age of Murder - Stephen Bach, Martin Edwards - Страница 27

The first person who set out to solve ‘the riddle of the Detection Club’ was Clair Price, the London correspondent of The New York Times. Her quest led to a top-floor flat ‘in a remote suburb of London’. By this, she meant Watford. There, ‘a cloud of cigarette smoke, rising from the depths of an easy chair’ revealed the debonair presence of Anthony Berkeley. Having conducted the first press interview about the recently formed Club with its debonair but daunting founder, Price was left in no doubt whatsoever that its members were ‘neither meek nor humble’.

It was typical of Berkeley that, despite his occasional professions of misanthropy, he not only decided to create the first social network of crime writers, but also possessed the charisma and drive to transform his idea into reality. It was equally characteristic that he embarked on this initiative a mere three years after publishing his first detective novel.

Mystery has shrouded the origins of the Detection Club. Julian Symons, a historian as well as a crime writer of distinction and former Club President, mistakenly wrote that the Club started in 1932. The Club itself continues to circulate a private list of members’ details giving the same date. The misunderstanding arose because a formal constitution and rules were not adopted until 11 March 1932, but the Club effectively came into existence two years earlier, and its origins date back to 1928.