Browse all of the Salem on Literature series

A. A. Milne (Critical Survey of Mystery and Detective Fiction)

Contribution

A. A. Milne brought his own brand of humor to the mystery story. One of his early essays for the British publication Punch was a satirical account of a Sherlock Holmes story. This tone stayed with him when he wrote his one famous mystery novel, The Red House Mystery (1922). The book borders on parody as both Milne’s characters and his readers play detective. Standing at the dawn of the Golden Age of British detective fiction, Milne helped set the tone for the other pre-World War II writers. To him, the mystery was a parlor game played by the idle...

[The entire page is 3284 words long]

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

Lookup any word on eNotes with our dictionary. Highlight the word and press SHIFT + D for a definition, or SHIFT + T for a synonym.