The Detection Club

Jane Dickinson reviews The Detection Collection, the latest anthology from Britain's Detection Club, in today's Rocky Mountain News:

There's a select club in the mystery world, with membership limited to the great names of British crime writing. Founded by Golden Age greats like Dorothy Sayers and G.K. Chesterton (its first president), the Detection Club now counts luminaries such as P.D. James and H.R.F. Keating among its ranks as it celebrates its 75th year of murder most foul.

According to an afterword in this anthology of short stories by present-day members, it's principally a dining club with traditions that each era reshapes to its own image. The originators required that members had published two detective novels "of admitted merit." They also had a few rules that modern-day writers would do well to heed: those who were chosen had to forego the use in their stories of "Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery Pokery" to solve crimes, while agreeing to use only in moderation "Conspiracies, Death-Rays, Ghosts. . . Trap-Doors. . . Super Criminals and Lunatics."

you can find the rest of the review here