The Modern Scholar: Detective Fiction cover art

The Modern Scholar: Detective Fiction

From Victorian Sleuths to the Present

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About this listen

From mysterious origins through the Victorian sleuths and the "Golden Age" of the genre (the 1920s through the 1940s) and to the present day, detective fiction, mysteries, and spy thrillers have consistently topped best-seller lists around the world.

Professor M. Lee Alexander provides listeners with a lively discussion of groundbreaking authors from Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle to Agatha Christie, Ian Fleming, and modern writers such as Nevada Barr and Jonathan Kellerman.

Download the accompanying reference guide.©2010 M. Lee Alexander (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLC Mystery Traditional Detectives
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It’s difficult to know how to review this series of lectures. On the whole, it was enjoyable and interesting. M. Lee Alexander seems to know her stuff, for the most part. There are a number of errors that I picked up on, however. For instance, I don’t know where she got the idea that Agatha Christie was a clergyman’s daughter; her father, Frederick Miller, was an American stockbroker. I also wouldn’t describe Christie’s first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1921), as a “blockbuster”. It was well received, but her greatest successes would come later with titles such as The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), Murder at the Vicarage (1930), Murder on the Orient Express (1934), And Then There Were None (1939), to name just a few genuine Christie blockbusters. Also, Alexander states that Miss Marple was the author’s favourite detective, but this isn’t the case either: Agatha Christie once mentioned—in her autobiography, I think—that Mr Harley Quin and Mr Satterthwaite from The Mysterious Mr Quin (1930) were her favourites. Perhaps Alexander’s other lectures were more accurate; I just happen to be a fan of Agatha Christie and the “Golden Age” writers in general, so I was more alert to factual errors in that lecture.

Many reviewers have remarked on the lecturer’s faltering narration, which is more of an issue. This is a series of lectures, of course, read by someone who isn’t a professional narrator of audiobooks. For this reason it doesn’t make for the smoothest listening experience. But perhaps one has to allow for this. I remember my lecturers at university being hit and miss: some were engaging and entertaining, while others merely read the lecture verbatim from a piece of paper. M. Lee Alexander comes somewhere in between.

Not bad; not great.

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