Many of your friends fans will be delighted to know that another book from you
is on the publisher's shelves and it's called Talking About Detective Fiction.
How did it all come about? Well, it began as long ago as 2006,
when I had a letter from the then librarian of the Bodleian at the request of the publishing department to write a book in aid of the library.
The royalties on talking about detective fiction are going to Bodley, and I wonder why you must have some affection for the dear old place.
Is that right? Anyone who has any contact with Oxford knows about the Bodleian.
It is one of the greatest libraries of the world.
And of course, it's not only for scholars, it's for everyone who is interested in books and wants information.
Some people have heard of Cambridge, haven't they, as well as Oxford?
Some people. And I just wonder. There are far more crime writers that we associate with Oxford,
who you shouldn't be surprised about this because you have made Oxford the most murderous city in the whole of the United Kingdom.
How many body bags of you produced? Well, that final count for most with 91 corpses.
I didn't count them myself, but somebody sent me 71 corpses and I kept a little card by the television set plus three or two.
Adam Derbyshire can't possibly compete with that.
The central theme of this book, Phyllis, I think, is the development of what we always used to call and how you use detective stories.
And these days we drifted towards sort of a different nomenclature as a crime novel.
Can you explain a little more, more fully then?
Well, if we go back to the so-called Golden Age, it had to be a puzzle and it had to be an ingenious puzzle,
and people had to be killed in very clever, ingenious ways.
They take people into an entirely different world, very often with a modern crime novel.
You're taken into the same old, violent world that you read about in the newspaper and see on the television.
Whereas if we go back into this comfortable village where Miss Marple lives, for example,
the vicar might find a body on the study floor, but it doesn't much interfere with the Sunday sermon.
And it's all solved by Poirot's Grey cells, or Miss Marple with her knitting.
And then the little village is absolutely transformed, peaceful again, until the next murder happens.
It's. And that is rather reassuring to read. Order is restored at the end.
Yes. Yes, I agree. The.
We've been talking Finnish about mostly UK writers in every way.
We mustn't forget that other countries have an enormous amount of literature, especially,
I think recently we've seen it in some of the Scandinavian countries, haven't we?
Well, I think it's interesting that there nearly always Protestant countries, people have made this point, which is interesting.
And of course, I have a whole chapter on the detective writing in America the sort of so-called hard boiled school.
Someone said that some Roman Catholic countries have a confession and the reading the crime of crime fiction is a way of getting rid of guilt.
And they can give us confession and get rid of it if we have to read crime fiction.
It's perhaps a little sort of far fetched, but it is curious.
I have not mentioned the wonderful cartoons which feature I think in every chapter in this book.
I think particularly marvellous is the one about The Hound of the Baskervilles.
I think that is the funniest every best wish to talking about the Detective Bells to you fellows and also, of course, to the Bodleian.
Thank you.