Writing in 1939, at what is as good a terminus as any other for the "Golden Age," the year of S.S. Van Dine's last and Raymond Chandler's first novel of detection, a reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement remarked, "A week in which new novels by Mr. Hull and Mrs. Christie appear should be a red-letter week for connoisseurs of detective fiction." For the reviewer, neither novel (And Death Came Too or Murder is Easy) was up to standard; but the point is clear that Hull's reputation at this time was very high indeed, at least in Britain-perhaps so high that Christie's title even invokes an earlier one of his (Murder Isn't Easy , 1936).

That reputation, however (and almost all reviews of Hull's subsequent novels call attention to this fact), is founded very heavily upon his first novel, The Murder of My Aunt (1934). Like Raoul Whitefield, Helen Eustis, and...