The Guilty Vicarage

One poet's love of mystery novels

“What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is what can you make people believe you have done.”
—Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle¹

Greetings, writers—

“For me,” writes poet W.H. Auden, “the reading of detective stories is an addiction like tobacco or alcohol.” He goes on: “if I have any work to do, I must be careful not to get hold of a detective story for, once I begin one, I cannot work or sleep till I have finished it.”

When was the last time you stayed up all night reading something?² For some reason I recall how Donna Tartt’s The Secret History kept me up until the wee-est of hours in 1994. (I remember so clearly my nearly nauseated fatigue, my almost helpless compulsion to keep reading.)