Shedunnit

The First Whodunnit


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What was the first murder mystery, really?

No major spoilers about clues or endings in this episode. However, there is some mention or discussion of the books listed below.

Sources and further information:

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

Partners In Crime by Agatha Christie

A Study In Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Mystery Of A Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

L’Affaire Lerouge by Emile Gaboriau

Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allen Poe

The Omnibus of Crime (1929) edited by Dorothy L. Sayers

"The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allen Poe

"The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allen Poe

"The Imp of the Perverse" by Edgar Allen Poe

Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers

The Late Scholar by Jill Paton Walsh

Uncle Silas by Sheridan Le Fanu

"A Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess" by Sheridan Le Fanu

The Aeneid by Virgil

Uncle Silas by Sheridan Le Fanu

The Labours of Hercules by Agatha Christie

Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

—“Who Wrote the First Whodunit?” by Steven Saylor

“Oedipus on the Nile: translations and adaptations of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannos in Egypt, 1900-1970” by Raphael Christian Cormack —“Oedipus the Detective” by Sean Fitzpatrick

“Oedipus as Detective: Sophocles, Simenon, Robbe-Grillet” by Page Dubois in Yale French Studies, 2005

“Oedipus versus Sherlock Holmes” by Marios Ploritis and Richard Schechner in The Tulane Drama Review, Winter 1965

—“From Sophocles to Sherlock: economics, literature and the detective story” by Frank Edmund Smith

—“Fergus Hume’s startling story” by Simon Caterson

—"‘The Most Popular Book of Modern Times’: Fergus Hume’s The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886)" by Clare Clarke in Late Victorian Crime Fiction in the Shadows of Sherlock

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Find a full transcript of this episode at shedunnitshow.com/thefirstwhodunnittranscript.

Music by Audioblocks and Blue Dot Sessions. See shedunnitshow.com/musiccredits for more details.

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ShedunnitBy Caroline Crampton

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