There are a few names that come up a lot in relation to the so-called Golden Age of Detective

Fiction.

Agatha Christie, of course, but Dorothy L. Seers, Marjorie Allingham, Gladys Mitchell, Josephine and

Naio Marsh are also all writers who are more or less associated with that great flourishing of crime writing that took place in Britain between the two world wars.

But then there are the writers who were active and popular around this time, but their work and reputation hasn't endured in quite the same way.

Perhaps it never sold quite as well, went out of print quickly, fell out of fashion, or didn't find a later critic to champion it to a new audience.

Whatever the reason, it can be time-consuming and expensive to get really stuck into their work now.

And so beyond a small group of devotees, these writers don't have many modern fans.

Things are beginning to change though.

There are more and more affordable reprinted editions of Golden Age novels appearing, making it easier to sample these

who-donuts without dropping hundreds of pounds on rare books first. But where should you start?

That's where this podcast comes in, and it's why today you're going to meet ECR Loric.

Welcome to She Dunnet. I'm Caroline Crampton.

I first encountered an ECR lorick in my local library about 10 years ago.

The copy I picked up at random one day was a pretty dilapidated book.

It looked like it had been borrowed and enjoyed a lot in the decade since its publication.

I gave it a second glance, mostly because it was in the crime section, and the title, The

Organ Speaks, attracted me as intriguingly mysterious.

When I read it, it turned out to be a story ideally suited to my interests,

since it combines a murder plot with classical music, and I read it with enjoyment before returning it to the library and forgetting all about its author for a few years.

I had no idea back then, when I read crime fiction just for fun and wasn't researching a podcast about it,

that I had stumbled by accident upon a rare, acclaimed and probably quite valuable book.

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