The Golden Age of Murder, Martin Edwards
Anyone who enjoys reading classic crime fiction will be able to get a few good hours of skimming out of this book that you can't get anywhere else. The people who wrote these novels were whackos, cranks, depressives, secret keepers and more. There's a fascinating amount of biographical information here, and in a way I'd be all in favour of someone re-writing it to make it into a more succinct set of potted biographies that stitch together to tell a broader story. It is the tale of the Detective Club and how it offered solace to the aforementioned fruit loops who produced this work, which is a slightly narrow approach. However, it works very well, the book has lots of good information and you can get through it quickly. It is also the sort of book you can happily put down half way through.