The Crime Clubs Transcript

Caroline: In 1928, the American art critic Willard Huntington Wright published a very important essay. It appeared in the September issue of the American Magazine under his mystery writing pseudonym S.S. Van Dine, and was titled "Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories". Plenty of his directives are now very familiar to crime fiction fans: he was in favour of authors playing fair with their readers, detectives using logical deductions and murderers sticking to scientific means rather than dabbling in the supernatural. Ronald Knox, a British crime writer, covered quite similar ground in his "Decalogue" or "ten commandments", which appeared in the same year.

Look a little closer at the thirteenth item on S.S. Van Dine's list, though, and a bit of a discrepancy appears. It begins: "Secret societies, camorra, mafias, et al, have no place in a detective story." No secret societies or clubs were to be permitted in crime fiction. That's very clear. And yet, writers don't seem to have been able to help themselves on this point. There are fascinating examples of secret societies and mysterious clubs in golden age detective fiction, and in real life writers seem to have loved to found and belong to such organisations. And that got me wondering: what was it that drew writers to this kind of gathering, over and over again, despite its questionable suitability for the fair play murder mystery?

Today, we're going to take a look at the crime clubs.

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Welcome to Shedunnit. I'm Caroline Crampton.

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S.S. Van Dine didn't limit himself just to ruling out secret societies, mafias and so on. His thirteenth rule continues thus as he elaborates on his theme:

"Here the author gets into adventure fiction and secret-service romance. A fascinating and truly beautiful murder is irremediably spoiled by any such wholesale culpability. To be sure, the murderer in a detective novel should be given a sporting chance, but it is going too far to grant him a secret society (with its ubiquitous havens, mass protection, etc.) to fall back on. No high-class, self-respecting murderer would want such odds in his jousting-bout with the police."

There are a few interesting points here. The first is Van Dine's distaste for the blending of crime fiction with other genres — specifically here he points to adventure fiction and secret service romance. We know from Knox's rules and other various statements from mystery writers of this time that Van Dine was far from being alone in this opinion. Disparaging references to romance or thriller elements were common in essays and reviews in the 1920s and 1930s. Even as writers like Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and others expanded the creative possibilities of the classic puzzle mystery, there was always this sense of maintaining boundaries, of trying to keep it distinct. The whole question of genre snobbery is too big and complex to get into here, but I do think that there was some of this at work too, of not wanting to "dilute" the intellectual puzzle elements of the murder mystery with what was seen by some as tropes from lightweight entertainment. Secret societies, a staple of the penny dreadful and the mass-market thriller, were emblematic of a kind of writing from which detective fiction was trying to separate itself.

Then Van Dine also touches on the fascination of the criminal as a lone wolf, their crimes created and executed by a single intelligence rather than a group. Although there are some excellent and extremely popular mysteries that delve into the idea of collective responsibility, this is still something that crime fiction largely adheres to. The growing popularity in the 1930s of psychological howdunnits that allow the reader to follow the murderer's every move is part of this desire for crimes with the signature of an individual author, I think. And then this also feeds into Van Dine's final point, about fairness and fair play. He couches the detective novel as a "jousting bout" between murderer and detective, and says that it wouldn't be an even match if the criminal had colleagues. The fact that the police inevitably arrive as a squad seems to have slipped his mind here. Still, I understand what he's driving at: the careful detection of clues and unravelling of alibis is harder to do when you're looking at the actions of five people intertwined in a scheme, rather than just one.

Van Dine published his ruling against secret societies in detective fiction towards the end of the 1920s, a decade that had in real life seen clubs and groups of this kind soar in popularity. The years immediately after the First World War ended saw upheaval in all parts of society: politically, economically, demographically and socially, the world had been changed. One aspect of this was a rise in the desire for safe, community-orientated leisure activities. A population recovering from immense trauma took comfort in jigsaw puzzles, treasure hunts, board games, crosswords and, of course, murder mysteries. Organisations that promoted structure and built-in social activity thrived too, from temperance leagues to the Women's Institute. And there was a darker side to this combination of economic hardship and the hunger for fellowship. I want to read you an extract from a May 1923 newspaper article titled "Secret Societies: Never So Many Before". It begins:

"When the countries of the world have been exhausted by external or internal strife, when legitimate political and social avenues to prosperity and happiness seem interminably long, when romance seems dead and duty more drab than ever, secret societies arise and flourish like mushrooms in the night."

"That is why there are to-day more perhaps than in any period of history since the Middle Ages, Whether they are old and respectable, like Freemasonry, or young, new, and untried as the very newest of all, the Most Noble order of Crusaders, recruits flock continuously to their ranks."

The writer goes on to link this increasing interest in secret societies to the burgeoning popularity of fascist organisations in Italy and the Ku Klux Klan in America. As much as we might see 1930s murder mysteries as escapist literature now, it's important to remember that there was a broader political context to the conditions that produced these books. And it is there in the crime fiction too. The KKK, of course, already had a connection to crime fiction via the 1891 Sherlock Holmes story "The Five Orange Pips", and the various international crime rings and secret societies that crime writers created reflected details of what they were observing in real life at home and abroad.

Writers were certainly not immune to this growing desire to socialise via clubs and societies of varying degrees of secrecy, though. In fact, one might say that they were early to the trend, since writers dining clubs date back to at least the eighteenth century. In 1764, Samuel Johnson and Edmund Burke, alongside the painter Joshua Reynolds, founded "The Club", initially a group of nine men in London who had political and/or artistic leanings and who met to eat together in Soho once a week. Supposedly initially an initiative of Johnson's to mitigate the solitariness of his own existence as a writer, the Club took on a life on its own over the years, expanded its membership through the nineteenth century and became more of a political than a literary organisation. It even spawned at least one spin off, known as "The Other Club", formed by Winston Churchill in the early 20th century when he wasn't invited to join the original club. Boundaries and exclusion, you see, are key ingredients here.

Other writers' clubs followed. The Authors' Club, formed by the critic Walter Besant in 1891, was a dining society with an explicitly literary focus — and indeed, still exists in that capacity today. Early members included the likes of Thomas Hardy, John Masefield and Jerome K. Jerome. Although not by any means focused on crime writers specifically, this club acquired a distinguished association with murder mystery writing when Arthur Conan Doyle became chairman and formed the habit of reading aloud to members from his unpublished manuscripts after dinner. Doyle's brother in law E. W. Hornung, author of the Raffles stories, was also a member, as was Israel Zangwill, author of The Big Bow Mystery, an early example of a locked room mystery.

Perhaps it was his experiences with the Authors' Club that prompted Doyle to get involved with a new, crime specific, club in 1903. Officially known to this day as "Our Society", this organisation is generally referred to as the Crimes Club. As these things so often do, this collection of men with criminological interests came together partly via existing friendships and partly through invitation. Some were writers, others were coroners, pathologists, academics, actors and more, all united by their fascination with the new science that was emerging around the detection of crime. As well as Doyle and Hornung, early members included the writer A.E.W. Mason, creator of Inspector Hanaud, the renowned barrister and "great defender" Sir Edward Marshall Hall, and the pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury. In addition to dining together, the group also reexamined cold cases and used their contacts in Scotland Yard to gain access to information and evidence. In 1905, some of the members even went on a group tour of Jack the Ripper's supposed haunts in Whitechapel.

Interestingly, the Crimes Club was not a secret society per se, in the sense that its existence was not a secret. But secrecy was an important part of how it operated. All meetings of the club were conducted with the understanding that the proceedings remained confidential and that no one member's contribution or participation would be made public after the fact. Our Society still exists today and still operates under the Chatham House Rule.

From what I can tell, these writers' societies tend to coalesce because of two factors: the urge to socialise and the desire to share an interest with likeminded people. They also tend to spawn generationally; each new cohort wanting to start their own thing rather than simply folding themselves into what has come before. Thus, in 1929 when Anthony Berkeley and Dorothy L. Sayers began discussing their longing for a group of detective fiction writers, they had little interest in simply starting a new wing of Crimes Club. The Detection Club began initially with informal dinners at Berkeley's house, and then became a proper club with premises, a constitution and a collegiate membership body. Like the Crimes Club, it maintained an interest in real life crime, hosting events and producing anthologies on this subject, but its principal focus was crime fiction, both the business of producing it behind the scenes and the qualities of the work itself. The Detection Club's existence certainly was not a secret — indeed, in some ways, it was a publicity vehicle for its members — but some of its activities certainly do feel ripped from the pages of a secret society thriller. The swearing of oaths on a skull, the use of a dramatic initiation ritual, the list of pledges to which members must adhere — they were doing in real life exactly the sort of thing that S.S. Van Dine was frowning over when it appeared in fiction.

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For all that puzzle purists like S.S. Van Dine might have railed against the inclusion of secret societies in crime fiction, writers have long enjoyed weaving mysterious collectives of criminals into their stories. Moriarty, Arthur Conan Doyle's "Napoleon of crime", leads just such an organisation in the Sherlock Holmes stories. Although Moriarty is not very prominent in Doyle's original stories, appearing in only a handful, subsequent adaptations and retellings have elevated the sinister professor to the status of Holmes's archenemy. The narrative potential of an evil genius at the head of a vast network of malefactors facing off against the worthy detective is vast.

G.K. Chesterton willingly took up the challenge in his 1908 novel The Man Who Was Thursday. The full title of the book is The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare and it sees a poet-detective, Gabriel Syme, descend into a world of mad, circular betrayal and counter betrayal. Syme is recruited to a top secret anti-anarchist team at Scotland Yard and then attempts to infiltrate an important anarchist council, the members of which go by a codename based on the days of the week, hence the title. The face off of these two secret societies — the police one and the anarchist one — is then complicated by Chesterton to the point where the reader feels they are inhabiting an M.C. Esher painting. It's a terrific novel, and while certainly not a straightforward detective novel, it contradicts the notion that if a criminal is part of a secret society, they are not "playing fair" against the police. The secret societies, both of them, in this book, are no help to anyone trying to get away with anything.

Another book that illuminates this subject is The Four Just Men by Edgar Wallace, which I covered in a Green Penguin Book Club episode earlier this year, with the assistance of Wallace fan and author Tom Mead. Again, this is not a pure detective novel by any means, but a work of crime fiction nonetheless that incorporates an impossible crime and a sinister international brotherhood carrying out the extrajudicial execution of a British politician who won't change certain legislation that they dislike. The four just men are most certainly a secret society and in this, the first of multiple novels about them, they pit their wits against the entirety of Scotland Yard and, indeed, in the later stages of the book, against the whole city of London. The main reason why I think The Four Just Men deserves a closer look for the secretive organisation at its heart is because of the moral dimension to the story. The reader begins the book sure that the four just men are an evil organisation, lurking in the shadows, spreading terror, and killing high profile people as their whims dictate. But as we spend more time with the characters, doubts creep in: the law they want changed would force the extradition of an activist who would then certainly be killed. Is that not also a form of extrajudicial killing? Wallace prompts us to think about whether a lawless secret society could ever, in fact, be more morally justified in its actions than an elected government.

Sometimes, the inclusion of a secret society in a crime novel is not so much about big moral questions than it is about adding mystery and confusion. In Margery Allingham's 1941 novel Traitor's Purse her sleuth Albert Campion deals with a duel investigation: on the one hand he is on the trail of a counterfeit money plot that threatens to destabilise the government, and on the other he is trying to work out who he is, because he has been hit on the head and has amnesia. Into all of this comes a puzzling and ancient hereditary organisation called "the Masters of Bridge", which controls a research institute referred to as quote "a living brain factory". The whole novel is infused with an atmosphere of paranoia, because Allingham's well-known series detective has lost his identity and backstory, so the addition of this peculiar secret society with its headquarters in some caves only adds to the destabilising effect of the whole plot.

One author, Anthony Berkeley, took inspiration for his crime club, or secret society, directly from life. His 1929 novel The Poisoned Chocolates Case centres around an organisation called the Crimes Circle. This is another one that has featured in my Green Penguin Book Club series, if you'd like to hear more about it. The first few pages of the book are dedicated to the details of this: the group has been brought together by Berkeley's series detective, novelist Roger Sheringham, and in the five months since he founded it he has acquired five further members. Only people with intense interest in and knowledge of all aspects of detection and psychology can be considered for membership. Candidates have to write a paper about criminology, which is then voted on by other members, with only those receiving unanimous approbation being admitted. Berkeley has a few reasons for giving the reader all this information upfront. It establishes the exclusivity of the club and the intensity of its members, of course, but it also provides a neat explanation for why there are only going to be six main characters in this book — nobody else has passed Sheringham's test. In addition, the supposedly high calibre of the Circle's members makes it slightly less implausible that Scotland Yard would be willing to collaborate with these amateurs — because that is, in fact, what the rest of the book is about. The members of the Crimes Circle take on a case that has so far baffled the police and each in turn present their solution to it. The secret society is everything to this book: it provides the structure, the tension, the mystery and, ultimately, the solution.

Dorothy L. Sayers dabbled in a secret society plot with her Peter Wimsey short story "The Adventurous Exploit of the Cave of Ali Baba". Wimsey, rumoured to have been killed while on a hunting expedition overseas, in fact returns to London and adopts the identity of a disgruntled footman in order to infiltrate a highly successful society of criminals. They succeed because only the head of the society — "number one" — knows the identity of anyone else taking part. The rest wear black hoods with their numbers embroidered on them, so there can be no chance of betrayal to the police. Wimsey works with the society for two whole years, gradually working out who all the members are, before he makes his move to take it all down. Much can be forgiven because this is a short story rather than a novel, but I think the over-complicated plot to unmask the members of the secret society demonstrates why this sort of thing is better suited to spy thrillers than golden age detective fiction.

Finally, no discussion of clubs or secret societies in crime fiction would be complete without a mention for The Seven Dials Mystery from 1929. This was Agatha Christie's ninth full-length novel and a follow-up, of sorts, to The Secret of Chimneys from 1925, in the sense that the central character of Bundle Brent and the detective, Superintendent Battle, recur. The "seven dials" of the title refers to a secret organisation meeting at a seedy nightclub, all of whom wear hoods with clock faces on their heads and are presumed to be behind the attempt to steal top secret scientific formula from the government. So far, so thriller — in fact, a plot that could have been lifted from a sensational crime story of the 1890s with little, if any, alteration. I think we're all so used to considering Agatha Christie as a masterful writer of puzzle mysteries, which of course she was, that we forget sometimes that she wrote quite a substantial number of more thriller-coded books too. Like this one, The Secret Adversary, and much later, works including Destination Unknown, Passenger to Frankfurt, and so on.

I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that The Seven Dials Mystery is exactly the kind of novel that S.S. Van Dine was critiquing with his "no secret societies" rule. It's a breathless, action-packed thriller with very little clueing or even detection, replete with plenty of melodramatic details — such as those clock hoods the baddies wear. But even when writing this kind of book, Christie can't help but show off her knack for a clever twist that uses a different interpretation of the same facts the reader has had access to all along. Her secret society is not all that it seems.

I think that speaks to the wider use of this kind of shadowy, mysterious organisation in crime fiction more generally, too. Yes, it can be a lazy, even corny way to introduce a generalised sense of dread to a book. Think Bond villains, stroking cats in underground bunkers. But, as I hope I've shown, crime collectives, whether formed in real life for professional companionship or in fiction, can be in the right hands a clever, even innovative way to tell a mystery story. Dismiss them at your peril.

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This episode of Shedunnit was written, produced and hosted by me, Caroline Crampton.
You can find links to all the books and sources we referenced in the episode description and at shedunnitshow.com/thecrimeclubs. I publish transcripts of every episode including this one; find them all at shedunnitshow.com/transcripts.

There are several other episodes of Shedunnit you might enjoy after hearing this one: The Detection Club, which goes into more detail about that august institution, Death at the Club, which is about mysteries set in private members' clubs, and the Green Penguin Book Club episode about The Poisoned Chocolates Case, which features guest Martin Edwards. Find them all linked in the episode description or in your podcast app now.

If you'd like to ensure the podcast's continued existence and get some extra audio goodies in the bargain, become a paying supporter now at shedunnitbookclub.com/join.

Shedunnit is edited by Euan McAleece and production assistance came from Leandra Griffith.

Thanks for listening.