This is a series of essays on the 'writers of the "Golden Age" of Anglo-American mysteries, trying to define the characteristics of the genre more concretely than has been done in the past. After a general introduction on the defining qualities of the mysteries of the period, it shifts to a sequence of discussions of individual writers --E.C. Bentley, Agatha Christie, A.A. Milne (for The Red House Mystery) Dorothy Sayers, Anthony Berkeley Cox (writing as Anthony Berkeley), Margery Allingham, John Dickson Carr, and Ngaio Marsh. I don't always agree with it, but the writer knows the books of that era well and has clever things to say about them. ( )

For me the best book on the English detective novel of the Golden Age, though I vehemently disagree with his seeing Freeman Wills Crofts and John Rhode only as hangers-on. For the sake of the argument that the English detective story is best understood as a reaction against the thrillers of Le Queux, Oppenheim, Buchan etc. Panek marginalizes an important part of this tradition.