Murder They Wrote

15 Points Per Correct Answer - No time limit  

1. Which author created a pipe-smoking character who came back from the dead to become probably the best known sleuth in the crime fiction genre? Edgar Allan Poe G.K. Chesterton Charles Dickens Arthur Conan Doyle

2. Which US author has been credited with inventing the 'police procedural' type of novel in the setting of a barely disguised New York City. I can't give you 87 clues, just four. Dan Kavanagh Anthony Boucher Willkie Collins Ed McBain

3. Which prize-winning author created a quirky pathologist who investigated suspicious deaths in an Irish city? Roddy Doyle Irish Murdoch Benjamin Black Anne Enright

4. We are all familiar with the hard-bitten cop or private detective who lives life to the extreme and likes nothing better than to consume large amounts of alcohol with no apparent ill-effect, but which author created a character who spent more time recovering from drinking sessions than investigating cases in the tough Chicago of the 1930s? Jonathan Latimer Reginald Hill William McIlvanney Edmund Crispin

5. Which author's best-known character sounds like he might have been named after an Irish county? On television he was always dressed in a very dapper style, and never forgot to take his hat off in the presence of a lady. Ruth Rendell Agatha Christie Dorothy L. Sayers Frances Fyfield

6. Regarded as the father of the modern literary novel, which author developed his style from the 1930s pulp magazines then created a hero with some questionable morals? I hope this question is not too much of a malteser. Raymond Chandler Dashiell Hammett Earle Stanley Gardner Ngaio Marsh

7. He was one of an American president's favourite authors and was a literary award winner. Which author's best known detective was a war veteran whose cases touched on the vexed issues of race and gender in America after WW2? Ronald Knox Elmore Leonard Walter Mosley James Lee Burke

8. Not everyone in Sicily is a Mafioso; there are many honest people and police officers there too. Which writer created vivid characters from the Sicilian people, including a cop with a sense of humour? Henning Mankell Andrea Camilleri Henry Mancini Cesare Beccaria

9. Which writer created a talented hero and also had a book that got the Hitchcock treatment? Her novels were sometimes seen as difficult and rarely had happy endings and the hero was more than a little unpleasant. Patricia Highsmith Sue Grafton Dorothy L. Sayers Minette Walters

10. Which author's main character has been described as "brutish but honest" and helped make him one of the best-selling authors of the 20th century. If I said he had a firm way of dealing with the crooks, I might be hammering home the point. Elmore Leonard James Lee Burke Lawrence Block Mickey Spillane