An obsessively researched survey of the lives and work of the members of the "Golden Age" of British detective fiction: Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Anthony Berkeley, G. K. Chesterton, and so many others. So many names and so many book titles! Yet still I came away with a delightful sense of what animated these authors--puzzles, mostly, and the need to set right in writing what could not be made whole in reality. It's easy to forget these prolific writers were human beings, and I appreciated the insights into their full lives as human beings.