Hello listeners, Caroline here. Today you're going to hear a remastered edition of one of the earliest she-done-it episodes,

all about the rules of detective fiction that evolved during the Golden Age period in the 1920s.

This topic has come up again and again in the years that I've been making the show,

but I'm aware that lots of new listeners have joined us since then and might not have heard my original discussion of it.

Also, my recording equipment has vastly improved since I started doing this,

and those old episodes definitely have room for audio improvement.

So I hope you enjoy this newly polished up version of the rules,

and find something in it that enhances your understanding and reading of classic crime fiction.

A good detective story has a recognisable rhythm.

The plot might have unexpected twists and the characters can surprise you,

but there are certain structures and tropes that recur through much of the crime fiction from the first half of the 20th century.

Some of them have been parodied to the point of cliché, such as the old The Butler Did It Solution,

but they are usually there nonetheless, providing the author with some creative constraints and the reader with a frame of reference.

Even if you aren't a big reader of mysteries, these founding principles of the genre are so familiar that I expect you'd still be able to name a few.

Nothing supernatural, no secret twins, no springing clues or suspects on the reader in the final chapter, the list goes on.

But how did these presets come to be woven through the books from the golden age of detective fiction between the two world wars?

And what happens when you break the rules?

Welcome to She Done It. I'm Caroline Grampton.

My obsession with what is and isn't allowed in the detective story began with A.A. Milne.

Although he is best known now for creating the Hundred Acre Wood and its residents, Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, Eor and Co,

Alan Alexander Milne was also a journalist, playwright and novelist, publishing work both before and after the First World War.

He had a passion for detective stories, and in 1922 published one of his very own, The Red House Mystery, in which the host's long-lost brother is found shot during a country house party,

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