"Forensic Chemistry in Golden-Age Detective Fiction."

In the summer 2014 issue of Chemical Heritage Magazine, Lee Sullivan Berry discusses "Forensic Chemistry in Golden-Age Detective Fiction: Dorothy L. Sayers and the CSI Effect," which touches on forensics in the works of Arthur Conan Doyle and R. Austin Freeman but concentrates on forensic aspects of Sayers's Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Strong Poison, and The Documents in the Case (coauthored with Robert Eustace, aka Dr. Eustace Robert Barton).

Collins, Cadfael, and more this week on BBC Radio 7.

This week on BBC Radio 7: The program The Lady Detectives features Wilkie Collins's The Law and the Lady (1874–75), in which a wife attempts to clear her husband of the charge of murdering his first spouse; and detective Florence Cusack looks into "Mr. Bovey's Unexpected Will" (1899) by L. T. Meade [Elizabeth Thomasina Meade Smith] and Robert Eustace [Dr. Eustace Robert Barton]. Also airing this week is Ellis Peters's Brother Cadfael in The Virgin in the Ice. Go here for the schedule or to listen.

About the image: L. T. Meade, NYPL.

Rex Stout's picks, best detective tales.

Here are the choices of Nero Wolfe creator Rex Stout for the ten best detective stories (qtd. in Vincent Starrett, Books and Bipeds [New York: Argus, 1947] 82):

The Moonstone (Wilkie Collins, 1868)

The Maltese Falcon (Dashiell Hammett, 1930)

The Benson Murder Case (S. S. Van Dine [Willard Huntington Wright], 1926)

The Documents in the Case (Dorothy L. Sayers and Robert Eustace [Eustace Robert Barton], 1930)

The Innocence of Father Brown (G. K. Chesterton, 1911)

Call Mr. Fortune (H. C. Bailey, 1920)

The Bellamy Trial (Frances [Newbold] Noyes Hart, 1927)

The Cask (Freeman Wills Crofts, 1920)

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Agatha Christie, 1926)

Lament for a Maker (Michael Innes [J. I. M. Stewart], 1938)