#1930s detective story

[atomic-chronoscaph]

The Crimson Clown's Threat - art by John A. Coughlin (1931)

[jepergola]

New story today: "Dramatic Irony in Action"

[driveintheaterofthemind]

Vintage Pulp - Spicy Detective Stories (Apr1935)

Culture

[shi-yin-drawings]

Detective Azaliah thinks Riley is hiding something, but she isn't too pleased about being a suspect.

Also included a no subs version and the rough sketch below!

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Crooks of the Waldorf by Horace Smith. London: John Long, 1930. Dust jacket illustrator unknown. The book recounts "the escapades of Joe Smith (no relation to the author), the house detective at the original Waldorf Astoria on 34th Street and Fifth Avenue (now the site of the Empire State Building.)"

Below is an excerpt from the book. It can be read online here, but can't be downloaded as anything other than a JPG.

Top photo: Stuff Nobody Cares About Bottom screenshot: University of Michigan

[chadsuke]

Comics Read in 2023:

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Vol. 9 by Koyoharu Gotouge (2017)

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Vol. 10 by Koyoharu Gotouge (2018)

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Vol. 11 by Koyoharu Gotouge (2018)

My Dear Detective: Mitsuko's Case Files Vol. 1 by Natsumi Ito (2023)

My Dear Detective: Mitsuko's Case Files Vol. 2 by Natsumi Ito (2023)

My Dear Detective: Mitsuko's Case Files Vol. 3 by Natsumi Ito (2023)

Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts Vol. 6 by Yu Tomofuji (2018)

Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts Vol. 7 by Yu Tomofuji (2018)

Cheating Men Must Die Vol. 1 by The King (2022)

[ID: Covers of the aforementioned books. End ID.]

[gutsposting]

The Coven in the Woods, pt. 3

Standing in the center of a clearing that was supposedly created by the raging fire last night, Gordon was more reminded of a meteorite impact rather than a campfire gone awry. Trees bent backwards, all in a circle. Ash was still falling from the sky, a large pile of it had been scattered all about. Gordon looked at Patrick, who had closed his eyes, his head cocked straight upward. “What do you think happened?”

“They didn’t finish.” He opened his eyes again, and turned his head to his left. “I think that they were trying to make a doorway there.” He pointed at a peculiar set of trees that were half-burnt. “And they were… doing their thing. Then someone interrupted, and paid for it.”  

Gordon took another look at the soil. “Bare Feet…” The prints were clear, and small. “How many of them do you think there were?”

“A hundred? More? Who can say… It’s too bad we can’t see the bodies.”

“Well they had to have taken them down to the city. Let’s finish up whatever you planned on doing here.” Pat looked back at him. “What?” Gordon asked.

“I don’t know if I want to get… Him involved.”

Gordon sighed, and rolled his eyes. “Well, if you don’t want to then you don’t have to. Let's just get on with it.”

Pat furrowed his brow, and scratched his head. “Let’s just talk to him…” Patrick reached for a pouch he kept in his jacket pocket. Small and made of dark leather, like a coin purse. Pat pulled a pinch of sand out of it, and sprinkled it in the air. He watched intently as it floated in the wind. 

Gordon stared at him with his arms folded. “Any luck?” He asked sarcastically.

Pat looked back at him, frowning. “This way.” He thudded along with his heavy, irregular steps, and Gordon followed far behind. 

“Is this how it normally is for you?”

“Pretty much… I’ve gotten used to it. No one takes the job seriously… I don’t think he’s far.” Pat seemed especially nervous as he talked. Gordon had apparently been the first person to believe his stories when he paid the museum a visit. Most people would come in, ask some inane question about getting abducted by aliens and make the same old jokes about ‘probing.’ Gordon was the only person to come by, in all the time that it had been open, who was attentive when he spoke about his possessions and receptive to his ideas. All the same, this excursion would prove to be a great stretch of his friends’ imagination.

“What are we gonna do if he’s not here?”

Pat peered back at him over his shoulder to answer. “Oh, he’s here…” Gordon saw that he was sweating profusely.

The rain began as Pat pulled out another pinch of the dust, keeping it in the palm of his hand. It was a light, stinging sprinkle. The sunlight from the bright morning which greeted them in the clearing had almost completely disappeared behind the clouds and the treeline. “One o’clock… Already dark as night…” Godon remarked. 

“Here.” Pat stopped underneath a massive dead oak tree. Its thick branches stretched out, like a sickening star, in every imaginable direction. The withered, gray branches twisted together like a million hands intertwined for eternity. Pat lifted up his shirt, and pulled a short-handle folded shovel out of his pants. “We’ll take turns.” He said, crouching down and beginning to wildly tear at the soil.

“Okay, come on!” Gordon threw his  hands up in the air. “You Have to be kidding!”

Patrick didn’t speak, only staring at Gordon as he threw clump after clump of dirt over his shoulder. 

Gordon covered his face with his hand, and sat down on a stump. It felt like hours passed before the old man digging the hole collapsed, lying on his back and gasping for air. He had dug wisely, and had made it about three feet in depth. Gordon watched Pat get up, still completely out of breath, shakily trying to meekly raise another pile of dirt out of the hole.

“Fine.” Gordon said. “I’ll take a turn.” The weather had become much worse, puddles of muddy water were beginning to form at the bottom of the hole. Gordon could hardly breathe, but he imagined his arms as a set of pistons, his torso as a mighty engine, and he forced his body to shred the ground out of his way.

Then the smell hit him. Sweet like old beef left in the refrigerator too long, if it was hot and all around you. It hit his stomach like a freight train, and the perfect storm brought on by the mud and the incessant raindrops pelting his hat brought it all back to him, all at once.

“Jesus, Pat…” 

“I know… Let me take over.” Pat put his hand on Gordons’ shoulder. During the war, Pat was distant and aloof, the way that an officer should be. It was only on the way back home, standing on the deck of that old steamer, that he expressed how much he cared about his boys. He kept up with all one-hundred and three men who survived by regularly writing letters to each one of them.

Gordon sat back down on the stump. His mother taught him a trick when he was going to throw up, he would hum anything that came to mind. “John Brown’s body lies a-moulderin’ in the grave…” He sang. 

Patrick chuckled. “I’ve got him!” He hollered. Gordon got up, and looked down the hole. He checked his watch.

“Five hours.” Gordon said. “Do you know this guy? He’s been here too long to be-”

Pat raised the shovel over his head, and swung it down like an axe. He feverishly brought the weapon crashing down again and again, and before long he had cracked open a football-sized hole into the coffin. “Wake up!” He shouted, laughing hysterically. “I need to talk to you!”

Gordon felt the urge to drop down into the hole to stop him. It was certainly wrong to stand by and let someone defile a corpse, but Gordon couldn't move. Pat curled his fingers against the edge of the hole he had made in the rotten old wood, and yanked upwards with all of his might. He sent splinters flying all around him as he ripped nearly an entire quarter of the top panel right off the ill-made coffin. 

The body had decomposed significantly, but Gordon refused to look at it. He remembered a corpse of a Frenchman that he had seen back in the day. He had been completely buried underneath the mud somehow. All you could see was an arm, his wrist twisting up and backward. He watched a rat nibble at his fingers one night, and almost got himself killed when he tried to protect the mans’ hand from the pest.

Patrick began slapping the dead man in the cheek. “Come on… I wanna talk to you! I know you’re in there!” The rain stopped like a faucet being shut off. Gordon felt chills run up his spine.

“What did you do?” Gordon shouted. Patrick pulled himself out of the hole, ignoring Gordons’ question. 

A pale figure peeked its head out from behind a distant tree. “Come on! I want to get this over with.” Patrick cupped his hands and shouted at it. Gordon grabbed his arm.

“What the fuck is that?” He demanded.

“It’s okay…” Patrick said, quietly. The figure slowly walked towards them. It was something similar to the form of a bald, pale man. Featureless, like a skeleton with a thin layer of skin draped over it. It slunk towards them shyly, but refused to come close before speaking. 

“Too long, it’s been too long.” A low, quiet voice scratched out. 

“What happened last night?” Patrick spoke up.

The creature hid behind a tree. “Cheated.” The voice changed, it was now like an old womans’. “They owe me four for last night, four for last night and hundreds more, hundreds.” 

“Just tell me about last night.” Patrick insisted. The creature stood up from the bushes, and had changed into something more resembling a man, a prisoner perhaps. Bald, covered in tattoos, it was like the creature was growing into… Gordon didn’t want to think about what was happening, but he couldn’t close his eyes. He stared at the creature, at the twisted-up face. He wanted to vomit. 

“He’s mine… and they took him to the mine, but he’s mine, and they took him… mine”

“They run the whole town, don’t they?” The creature shrugged. 

“You will know where to go, you will feel it and will know. You will find what's' mine in the mine, he’s mine and I want them all back.” It made some kind of motion with its arms, like it was draping a blanket over its body, and a black robe appeared. It completely covered the creature, with no apparent way to see out of the hood. 

The voice had changed again, to that of a sad young woman. “Patrick…” it called out. “When will I see you again?” 

Pat looked like a deer in headlights. “We can talk later… After I finish this case?”

A mans’ voice, deep and authoritative. “You promise?”

“Yes, I do.”  

[michaeladrianwright]

Der Golem - Det. Golem

[vlunaart]

Detective Derek Bungler-- who is he?

He's a 1930's detective making every attempt to be tough but reliable. He stirs up controversy in the newspapers for consistently helping people of color and for refusing to affiliate himself with police enforcement. He works outside the law, that is to say, and he is popular with the ladies (and occasionally men).

But there's more to learn, served up on a platter called "Inside Scoop: Confessions Of A Drunk Detective" or IC: COAD for short!

[soutsuji]

I love it when I'm doing research and sources start referencing sources I've already read. Makes me feel like I'm winning some sort of game

[batboyblog]

Copy Right and Public Domain in 2025!

It's January 1st 2025 which means it's my favorite unsung holiday! Public Domain Day! This is the day once a year when, in the US, copyrights expire and things enter the public domain, meaning they belong to everyone! even you, Steve!

American copyright for books, movies, art work, and musical compositions (but not recordings, more on that later) runs for 95 years (way too long!) so today works published in 1929 join us in the public domain.

So whats free? so glad you asked.

Popeye the Sailor Man

Many people assume Popeye originated as a cartoon character but thats not true, he comes from a comic strip. The strip was called Thimble Theatre and Popeye was something of a late addition. Thimble Theatre was first published in 1919, so Popeye's girlfriend Olive Oyl has been in the public domain since before the big 20 year copyright freeze of 1998-2019. Popeye first appeared as a minor character 10 years into the strip's run but was so popular he soon took over and the strip would be renamed Popeye less than 5 years later. Now as always whats public is only what appears in 1929, later developments, remain copyrighted. Such as, while Popeye always had super strength its not till 1932 his superpowers were tied to eating spinach, and Olive Oyl originally had a different boyfriend named Ham Gravy, who she dumped for Popeye when he became the main character. It looks like Popeye is following tradition for famous now public domain characters and getting a quicky horror movie this year.

Tintin!

This is personally very exciting as someone who grew up with the Belgian boy detective. Like Popeye I expect a lot of people don't know that Tintin started off as a weekly comic strip. Indeed Tintin appeared as a part of a weekly youth supplement in the Catholic newspaper The Twentieth Century. Any ways, Tintin was first published in there in January 1929, and soon would start what would become the first Tintin story, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. Now only part of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets was published in 1929, the story line wrapped up in May 1930, so only those 1929 stories and what appears in them is free and clear and Tintin was published in black and white not color. Tintin's author Hergé had no idea what he was doing and was really learning on the job so In The Land of the Soviets is generally seen as his weakest outing and the only one he never opted to redraw in later years. Even so it's nice to see the character free in the world. No word on if Tintin will star in a horror movie.

Buck Rogers (but not really)

The original futuristic space man was published, again a comic strip, in 1929 which means he should enter the public domain today, but he won't. That's because he already is public domain! Before the Copyright Act of 1976 copyright was 28 years with the option to renew for another 28 years. The copyright on the original comic strips was not renewed so ran out at the end of 28 years, 1958. So Buck Rogers has been free and clear for close to 70 years now, whatever you hear about him today.

What else?

Famously last year Mickey Mouse entered the public domain, but all the entered public domain was one (maybe two) animated short, Steamboat Willie. Well this year a dozen Mickey Mouse animated shorts enter the public domain, including the first time Mickey has his iconic white gloves, and the first time Mickey speaks (the first thing Mickey Mouse ever says, voiced by Walt Disney himself, is "Hot dogs! Hot dogs!" in case you were wondering) This will give creators much more to work with if they want to use Mickey in their works which is exciting.

Speaking of Walt Disney, The Skeleton Dance is entering public domain, you likely don't know the title but I suspect you've seen at least part of it at some point

so look for this showing up on TVs in the backgrounds of films and TV shows in the next year or so

Books

The iconic novels of World War I, Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front enter public domain. In fact All Quiet on the Western Front entered public domain last year, but only in the original German, the 1929 translation by Arthur Wesley Wheen is whats entered the public domain now. John Steinbeck's first novel, Cup of Gold, William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, and Agatha Christie's Seven Dials Mystery (always get an Agatha Christie novel on this list for the rest of our lives). Dashiell Hammett published both Red Harvest and The Maltese Falcon, later made into one of the greatest films of all time, in 1929. Future children's book author E. B. White (who's go on to write Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little) and future New Yorker cartoonist and humorist James Thurber teamed up to write the delightfully titled Is Sex Necessary? Or, Why You Feel the Way You Do a book of spoof essays making fun of popular books on Freudian sexual theories at the time. The Roman Hat Mystery the first of the long running Ellery Queen mysteries was published, Queen would keep publishing mysteries into the 1970s (and Ellery Queen was a pen name for two people). Richard Hughes' A High Wind in Jamaica and Oliver La Farge's Laughing Boy also came out in 1929 and are in the public domain now. There's much else but those are the highlights sorry if I missed your favorite 1929 novel.

Movies

Alfred Hitchcock and Cecil B. DeMille's first movies with sound, Blackmail and Dynamite respectively, came out in 1929. Marx Brothers' first feature film The Cocoanuts joins the public domain. Other comedy land marks are Harold Lloyd's first sound film, Welcome Danger and Buster Keaton's last silent film, Spite Marriage (which Keaton also directed). John Ford's first sound film, The Black Watch, which also is 21 year old John Wayne's first appearance in a film, as an uncredited extra, he worked in the art department. Hallelujah the first studio film to have an all black cast came out that year. Also worth noting is The Hollywood Revue of 1929 a singing and dancing review, one of the earliest and the movie that popularized the song Singin’ in the Rain, maybe the first time a movie made a song a hit.

Musical compositions

musical compositions, ie the lyrics and musical notations you might see on sheet music are governed by the 1976 Copyright Act, and music written in 1929 is public domain. Music recordings are governed by a whole different law (we'll get there). Songs written in 1929 include Singin’ in the Rain by Arthur Freed & Nacio Herb Brown, Ain’t Misbehavin’ and Black and Blue by the legendary Fats Waller, What Is This Thing Called Love? by Cole Porter, Tiptoe Through the Tulips by Alfred Dubin, You Were Meant for Me by Arthur Freed & Nacio Herb Brown, and also Happy Days Are Here Again by Jack Yellen which would become FDR's campaign theme song in 1932.

Art!

a number of pieces by Salvador Dalí including:

Illumined Pleasures

The Accommodations of Desire

The Great Masturbator

are entering the public domain as is René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images.

Art is hard because while movies and books are clearly "published" and put on sale, what counts as "published" for a piece of art? the law is not totally sure.

Musical Recordings

as I promised, we got here. Till 2017 there were no federal laws governing the copyright of music recordings before the 1970s, it was governed by a confusing patchwork of state laws and it was not totally clear what was or was not free and clear even from the very earliest recordings ever. Now the term of a music recording's copyright is set at 100 years (way too long) so music recorded in 1924 is now public domain such as. Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen by Marian Anderson, Everybody Loves My Baby (But My Baby Don’t Love Nobody But Me) by Louis Armstrong, California Here I Come by Al Jolson, Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin, Shreveport Stomp by Jelly Roll Morton, Mama’s Gone, Good Bye by Ray Miller, and It Had To Be You by Marion Harris. Now many recordings a lot less famous can finally be preserved and digitized to save them for the next 100 years. Many abandoned works are literally rotting away since without the copyright holder's permission digitizing a work isn't legal.

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Spicy Detective Stories - Cover art by H. J. Ward (1934-1942)

[portfollies]

[driveintheaterofthemind]

Vintage Pulp - Clues Detective Stories (Nov1938)

Art by Emery Clarke

Street And Smith

[morporkian-cryptid]

Welcome to the wonderful world of Arsène Lupin Copyright Shenanigans

Have I ever told y’all about the absolute madness that is the legal issues around the Lupin franchise ? Probably. Can I find the post in question ? No. Am I going to tell you again ? You fucking bet !

The year is 1905, and detective stories are all the rage. Maurice Leblanc, a young writer, is commissioned by the magazine Je Sais Tout to write a short story on the same model as Sherlock Holmes. Maurice Leblanc says « Screw this detective shit », and creates the character of Arsène Lopin, gentleman thief.

No, this is not a typo.

Arsène Lopin, a municipal advisor in Paris, hears about it and contacts Leblanc. « You are not fucking writing a story about a thief who shares my name. » To which Leblanc replied, « Lopin ? No no, you misunderstand, this is Arsène Lupin, completely different person. »

And he gets away with it.

Leblanc writes a bunch more stories about Arsène Lupin, they get popular, and he decides he wants to write a crossover with the famous British detective, Sherlock Holmes. A crossover in which, of course, Lupin will win and Holmes will be humiliated.

Arthur Conan Doyle hears about it, and is not thrilled. He contacts Maurice Leblanc with a message along the lines of « You are not fucking writing a story where my Amazing-Original-Character-Do-Not-Steal gets bested by a thief. » To which Leblanc replies, « Sherlock Holmes? No no, you misunderstand, this is Herlock Sholmes, completely different person. »

And he gets away with it.

The years pass, more Lupin stories are written, they’re translated and exported outside of France, and wouldn’t you know it, Japan takes a strong liking to the « gentleman thief » archetype in general and to Arsène Lupin in particular.

The years is 1967, and mangaka Kazuhiko Kato, best known by his pen name Monkey Punch, is commissioned by the magazine Weekly Manga Action to create a manga for their first issue. He reads 15 of Leblanc’s stories, and creates Lupin the Third, a character who is the grandson of the famous gentleman thief. He does not bother asking the Leblanc Estate for permission, as Japan doesn’t give much of a crap about French copyright laws.

(For the record, Weekly Manga Action was the first manga magazine for an adult audience (outside of erotica), and Lupin III was published in its first issue, effectively making it one if not the very first adult manga in the history of manga.)

The Lupin III manga gets popular, is adapted into an anime, the anime gets popular, it gets translated into other languages and exported to Europe…

And then the Leblanc estate rears its head. «You are not making an anime about our character without paying us fucking royalties, » they say to Monkey Punch. To which Monkey Punch, channeling the spirit of the deceased Maurice Leblanc into his very soul, replies : « Lupin ? No no, you misunderstand, this is Rupan, completely different person. »

And he fucking gets away with it.

(Arsène Lupin became public domain in France in 2012. Before that, Lupin the Third took many different names in European releases, among which Rupan, Wolf, and in France, Edgar de la Cambriole (Edgar of Burglary).)

Additional tomfuckery :

The year is 1982, and science-fiction animated series are getting extremely popular. TMS decides to try and get a slice of the cake, and begins the development of Lupin VIII, a sci-fi spinoff about Lupin III’s descendant. The anime is being produced in France, and the Leblanc Estate once again rears its head. « Sure, you can make that anime, » they say, « but pay us fucking royalties. » TMS, as previously established, does not want to pay the Leblanc Estate diddly squat, and so they scrap half of the project, recycle the other half, and go « Lupin VIII ? No no, you misunderstand, this is Inspector Gadget, completely different person. »

The year is 1930, and famous Japanese writer Tarō Hirai writes The Golden Mask, a novel in which his detective character Kogoro Akechi goes up against none other than Arsène Lupin. Hirai’s pen name was Edgar Allan Poe- wait, wait, no, sorry, it’s Edogawa Ranpo, completely different person.

(Later, Gosho Aoyama names his character, Detective Conan Edogawa, after Arthur Conan Doyle and Edogawa Rampo (and the anime is distributed by TMS).)

(More than fifty years later, the Lupin III anime makes a tribute to Ranpo’s Gold Mask with the double episode The Imperial City Dreams of Thieves.)

The year is 2021, and Capcom is releasing the video game The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, in which famous detective Sherlock Holmes plays a central role. Unfortunately for them, a few Sherlock Holmes stories are still under copyright, and the Conan Doyle Estate is about as stubborn and greedy as their French cousins. « Pay us fucking royalties, » they say.

In the English release of the game, Sherlock Holmes is renamed to, you guessed it...

...fucking Herlock Sholmes.

[hopelesslyprosaic]

A Different Kind of Queen of Crime- five ways that Dorothy L Sayers changed the way we see Sherlock Holmes

For my first Holmesian post- a crossover with one of my more usual subjects on my other blog! For when one is talking about Sherlock Holmes, in particular Sherlock Holmes scholarship, there are nor many more pivotal names than Dorothy L Sayers. Sure, Christopher Morley may have had a greater impact on Sherlockian culture, and Richard Lancelyn Green on Holmesian scholarship, to name only a few- but Sayers's contributions to scholarship and "the game" were early and underratedly pivotal.

If you're a Sherlock Holmes fan who is unfamiliar with Sayers's influence, or a Sayers fan who had no idea she had any interest in Holmes, keep reading! (And if you're a Sherlock Holmes fan who wants to know what I think about Sayers, check out her tag on my main blog, @o-uncle-newt. Or, more to the point, just read her fantastic books.)

There's a great compilation of Sayers's writing and lecturing on the topic of Holmes called Sayers on Holmes (published by the Mythopoeic Press in 2001), though some of her essays are also available in her collection Unpopular Opinions, which is where I first encountered them. It's not THAT extensive, and it's from an era in which Sherlock Holmes scholarship, such as it was, was still very much nascent. While a lot may have happened since Sayers was writing and talking about Holmes, she got there early and she made an immediate impact- and here's how:

She helped create and define Sherlockian scholarship: Don't take this from me, take it from the legendary Richard Lancelyn Green! At a joint conference of the Sherlock Holmes Society and Dorothy L Sayers Society, he said that "Dorothy L. Sayers understood better than anyone before her the way of playing the game and her Sherlockian scholarship gave credibility and humor to this intellectual pursuit. Her standing as an authority on the art of detective fiction and as a major practitioner invigorated the scholarship, and her...Holmesian research is the benchmark by which other works are judged. It would be fair to say, as Watson said of Irene Adler, that for Sherlockians she is the woman and that …she 'eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex.'" We'll go into a bit more detail on some specific examples below, but one important one is that, as Green notes, Sayers was not only a mystery writer but an acknowledged authority on mystery fiction, whose (magisterial) introduction to The Omnibus of Crime, a then-groundbreaking history of the genre of mystery fiction, included a highly regarded section on the influence of Holmes on mystery fiction. She was able to write not just literate detective stories but literate critiques of others' stories and the genre (as collected in the excellent volume Taking Detective Stories Seriously), and as such, the writing she did on Holmes was well received.

She cofounded the (original iteration of) the Sherlock Holmes Society of London: While the current iteration of the Society lists itself as having been founded in 1951, a previous iteration existed through the 1930s, founded as a response to the creation of the Baker Street Irregulars in New York and run by a similar concept- the meeting of Sherlock Holmes fans every so often for dinner at a restaurant. Sayers, who seems to have been much more clubbable than Mycroft Holmes, helped run the Detection Club on corresponding lines as well. (Fun fact, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was invited to be the first president of the Detection Club! However, he refused on grounds of poor health and, either right before or right after he died, the Detection Club met for the first time with GK Chesterton as president.) While the 1930s society didn't last, and Sayers didn't decide to join the newly reconstituted club in 1951, her presence from the beginning was key to the establishment of Holmesian scholarship.

She helped define The Game: Sayers didn't invent The Game, as the use of Higher Criticism in the study of Sherlock Holmes came to be called. (The Game now often refers to something a bit broader than that, but it's a pretty solid working definition to say that it is the study of Holmes stories as though they took place in, and can be reconciled with, our world.) Her friend Father Ronald Knox largely invented it almost by accident- as Sayers described it, he wrote that first essay "with the aim of showing that, by those methods [Higher Criticism], one could disintegrate a modern classic as speciously as a certain school of critics have endeavoured to disintegrate the Bible." This exercise backfired, as instead of finding this analysis of Holmes stories silly, people found it compelling and engaging- and this style of Sherlockian writing lives on to this day in multiple journals. Sayers, with her interest in religious scholarship as well as Holmes, was well equipped to both understand Knox's original motivations as well as to carry on in the spirit in which further Game players would take his work, as we'll see. She also wrote the line that would come to define the tone used in The Game- that it "must be played as solemnly as a county cricket match at Lord's; the slightest touch of extravagance or burlesque ruins the atmosphere." While comedic takes on The Game would never vanish, her establishment of tone has lingered, and pretty much any in-depth explanation of The Game will include her insightful comment.

Some of Sayers's ideas became definitional: Here's a question- what's John Watson's middle name? If you said "Hamish," guess what- you should be thanking Dorothy L Sayers. (When this middle name was used for Watson in the BBC Sherlock episode The Sign of Three, articles explaining its use generally didn't bother to credit her, instead saying that "some believe" or a variation on that.) She was the one who speculated that the reason why a) Watson's middle initial is H and b) Mary Morstan Watson calls Watson "James" instead of "John" in one story is because Watson's middle name is Hamish, a Scottish variant of James, with Mary's use of James being an intimate pet name based on this nickname. It's as credible as any other explanation for that question, but more than that it became by far the most popular middle name for Watson used in fan media. Others of Sayers's ideas include that Watson only ever married twice, with his comments about experience with women over four continents being just a lot of bluster and him really being a faithful romantic who married the first woman he really fell for (the aim of this essay being to demolish HW Bell's theory of a marriage to an unknown woman between Mary Morstan and the unnamed woman Watson married in 1903, mentioned by Holmes in The Blanched Soldier); that Holmes attended Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (she denied that he could have attended Oxford, having gone there herself- fascinatingly, Holmesians who went to Cambridge usually assert that he attended Oxford! Conan Doyle of course attended neither school); and reconciling dates in canon (making the case that one cannot base a claim for Watson's mixing up on dates on poor handwriting as demonstrated in canonical documents, as it is clear from the similarity of different handwriting samples from different people/stories that they were written, presumably transcribed for publication purposes, by a copyist).

She wrote one of the only good Holmes pastiches: Okay, fine, I'm unusually anti-pastiche, and genuinely do like very few of them, but this is one that I love- and even more than that, it's even a Wimsey crossover! On January 8 1954, to commemorate the occasion of Holmes's 100th birthday (because, of course, he was born on January 6 1854- Sayers was more in favor of an 1853 birthdate but thought 1854 was acceptable), the BBC commissioned a bunch of pieces for the radio, including one by Sayers. You can read it here (with thanks to @copperbadge for posting it, it's shockingly hard to find online), and I think you'll agree it's adorable. The idea of Holmes and Wimsey living in the same world is wonderful, the way she makes it work is impeccable, and it's clearly done with so much love. Also you get baby Peter, which is just incredibly sweet!

I got into Dorothy L Sayers, in the long run, because I loved Sherlock Holmes from childhood and that later launched me into early and golden age mysteries- but it was discovering Sayers that brought me back full force into the world of Holmes. Just an awesome lady.