Tales from the crypt: Why murder mysteries refuse to die

And then came the inflection point, in 1841, when the first modern detective story, Edgar Allan Poes The Murders in the Rue Morgue, featuring the detective C Auguste Dupin, made its appearance in the pages of Grahams Ladys and Gentlemans Magazine..

Allan Pinkerton, Chicagos first full-time police detective, wrote a series of books and founded the Pinkerton National Detective Agency - which features in a number of genre classics too...

Great female crime writers at the time include Margery Allingham with her detective Albert Campion; Dorothy L Sayers, who worked with an advertising agency and created Lord Peter Wimsey (think Bertie Wooster with brains); and New Zealander Ngaio Marsh and her Inspector Roderick Alleyn..

The equally prolific John Creasey (creator of The Toff, The Baron and other crime fighters) wrote two series of police procedurals, one featuring Inspector Roger West, written after a policeman neighbour challenged him to write books depicting policemen as they really are, and another featuring Superintendent Gideon of Scotland Yard..

There were several others: Ed McBain (who, among other things, wrote The Blackboard Jungle, which gave us the term rock and roll; wrote the script for Alfred Hitchcocks The Birds; and was PG Wodehouses literary agent for a while); Joseph Wambaugh, an LAPD sergeant-turned-writer who developed the hard-hitting crime drama Police Story for television..

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