Caroline: A classic murder mystery is a closed circle. It's why settings like trains, islands and country houses are so popular in the detective stories of the 1920s and 30s. They naturally limit and contain the potential suspects. In these stories, murder is often a family affair. Whereas
Caroline: Every age has had a different way of describing a woman who exists alone, rather than as part of a couple. Today, she might just call herself "single", but at different times in the past people might have referred to her, often with contempt, as an "
Caroline: For a couple of decades between the first and second world wars, something mysterious happened. Many things, actually — there were murders in country houses, on golf courses, in Oxford colleges, on trains, in vicarages, in far flung parts of the globe and quaint English villages. Pistols, daggers, blunt instruments
