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? Arthur Conan Doyle Charles Dickens Edgar Allan Poe G.K. Chesterton

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. Anthony Boucher Dan Kavanagh Ed McBain Willkie Collins

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

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? Edmund Crispin William McIlvanney Jonathan Latimer Reginald Hill

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. Dorothy L. Sayers Frances Fyfield Agatha Christie Ruth Rendell

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 Ngaio Marsh Earle Stanley Gardner Dashiell Hammett

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? Walter Mosley James Lee Burke Elmore Leonard Ronald Knox

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? Andrea Camilleri Henry Mancini Henning Mankell 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. Dorothy L. Sayers Patricia Highsmith Sue Grafton 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 Mickey Spillane Lawrence Block James Lee Burke