Looking to Get Into Golden Age mysteries?
Allow us to help you! A guide to the guides!
Friends! There is nothing—nothing—like a Golden Age mystery! They are the best ways to spend an afternoon, a weekend, a summer vacation….
Golden Age mysteries are in right now, which is fantastic for me and the hoards of other enthusiastic fans. You might be looking to start one, and if you have, then maybe you’ve looked for resources. Because you have to find one in order to read it, right?
Well, you can always ask your local bookseller. And if you don’t have a good local mystery resource nearby, you can always call The Mysterious Bookshop in NYC or The Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale, AZ, or Murder by the Book in Houston, TX, or the Raven Bookstore in Lawrence, KS, or any other mystery-specialty bookshop you know.
But if the bookshops are closed, and you’re desperate to learn how to proceed, then check out this guide.
New York Times Book Review editor Sadie Stein has put together a hand-dandy starter pack, which made me wonder how many other lists there are out there. I assembled a few. Here are ways to find Golden Age mysteries if you’re looking for one.
For Beginner:
New York Times Book Review‘s starter pack really can’t be beat. It’s got a great breakdown of entry-level texts for each kind of mystery.
For Indefatigables:
Work your way through the American Mystery Classics canon. There are some obscure gems in here—and this collection is ever-growing.
For Psychos:
Look across the pond and dive into the British Library Crime Classics series. This enormous collection will turn up wonderful, mostly-forgotten stories, a few of which might be new to even you.
Olivia Rutigliano
Olivia Rutigliano is an Editor at Lit Hub and CrimeReads. Her other work appears in Vanity Fair, Vulture, Lapham's Quarterly, AirMail, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Public Books, The Baffler, Bright Wall/Dark Room, Politics/Letters, The Toast, Truly Adventurous, and elsewhere. She has a PhD from the departments of English/comparative literature and theatre at Columbia University, where she was the Marion E. Ponsford fellow. She hosts the podcasst "Culture Schlock" at Lit Hub Radio. She is on instagram at @oldebean, twitter at @oldrutigliano, and bluesky at @oliviarutigliano.bsky.social.
