The Most Collectible Mystery Books from the 1930s

Crime thrillers, espionage, cozy country mysteries - help us sort out whodunnit! [Share]( [Share]( [Tweet]( [Tweet]( [Forward]( [Forward]( [Pin]( [Pin]( 1930s: The End of the Golden Age of Mysteries [See our picks for the best of 1930-1939]( Welcome back to the continuation of our Book Collecting by the Year series, this time featuring the second half of the "Golden Age of Mysteries." The 1930s were the apex of detective fiction, especially in Britain and the US. Many classics like The Maltese Falcon, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and The Big Sleep were published during the decade and authors like Earle Stanley Gardner, Agatha Christie, Rex Stout, and Raymond Chandler became household names. The development of feature-length movies with synchronized sound gave rise to the "Golden Age of Hollywood." As cinema became a principal form of entertainment, many popular mystery books were made into films, including The Thin Man, The Maltese Falcon and classics like The Hound of the Baskervilles and Murders in the Rue Morgue. Pre-World War II dust jackets are very rare, as they were considered part of the packaging rather than part of the book and often taken off the book at the point of sale and thrown away. This drives up the price of books with intact dust jackets from the 1920s and 1930s exponentially - an otherwise unremarkable Agatha Christie short story collection was sold at auction in 2012 for more than £40,000 because of the inclusion of the original dust jacket. The popularity of detective fiction waned with the outbreak of WWII and the Golden Age of Mysteries ended, but the high water mark that it left made mystery and detective tropes an ingrained part of popular culture. We’ve gone through the years and presented our picks for the top mystery books to collect that were published in English between 1930-1939. [See our picks for the best of 1930-1939]( As always, let us know what you think! Did we hit the mark? Share your favorites with us by replying to this email, in the comments on the page, or find us on social: [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Link]( A Brief History of Mystery Books What exactly is a mystery book? In a mystery novel, a crime is committed. The crime is commonly a murder, but thefts or kidnappings are also popular. The action of the story revolves around the solution of that crime – determining who did it and why, and ideally achieving some form of justice. There are many specific subtypes within the mystery genre: police procedurals, hard-boiled detective stories, espionage thrillers, medical or forensic mysteries, cozy mysteries, closed-room mysteries, and courtroom dramas, to name a few. As myriad as they sound, they all sprouted from the same authors and history. [Read more...]( [A Brief History of Mystery Books]( Are you on Instagram? Join us! [Join us!]( We will be featuring more mysteries, thrillers, and chillers as we continue to roll out this Book Collecting By The Year series. Follow Biblio: [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Link]( Copyright © 2020 Biblio.com, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in at Biblio.com, or from our Facebook page. Our mailing address is: Biblio.com PO Box 1211Asheville, NC 28802 [Add us to your address book]( Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe from this list](.