I have a particular fascination with the Knox Decalogue, the list of ‘rules’ for the writing of good detective fiction as complied by Ronald Knox in 1929. It fascinates me for many reasons, not least the way it has been misrepresented down the years and its clear-sighted common sense taken as narrowness by many people who fail to appreciate the genre understanding contained within.

Many people have, I’m sure, gone out of their way to write stories which flout Knox’s rules — not least Josef Škvorecký, whose collection Sins for Father Knox (1973) contains ten stories, each breaking a different edict — and the latest addition to their ranks is School of Hard Knox (2023), a collection from Crippen & Landru comprising thirteen newly-commissioned tales along the same lines. Ordinarily, a non-Golden Age anthology containing work by people I have mostly never heard of wouldn’t even make it past the gate, but the topic here really is a fixation of mine, and so I had to investigate further…if only to find out who, in these more sensitive times, was going to write a story containing the lazy racial stereotypes Knox warns against.

Jeffrey Marks’ introduction provides the rules — alas, in their shortened form — and, pleasingly, some context to explain each of them and then we’re off…

‘Not Another Secret Passage Story’ by Donna Andrews: In searching for a centuries-lost family treasure mentioned in an old will, the various generations who have inherited a stately pile have pored through multiple secret passages hidden throughout the house.

This is pleasingly brief, and displays a playful tone, an agreeable lack of morals, and a clever little idea flourished right at the close. There’s no detection and so no detective, but you do what you can in the short space you have and this gets the collection off to a good start.

‘A Matter of Trust’ by Frankie Y. Bailey: A woman finds a note on her car windscreen saying simply Ask him what he did, presumably referring to her husband. A few days later, her husband’s best friend is shot dead. Are the two events related?

I’m not a fan of this style of storytelling — not so much a plot as a series of scenes that we jump between — and it proved difficult to follow what was going on at times, but the dialogue is excellent and has an authentic ring to it, which helps ground the events in something tangible. Perhaps more importantly, the story doesn’t appear to break any of Knox’s rules. So, well, I’m confused.

‘The Dinner Party’ by Nikki Dolson: As part of her debt to a crime boss, a single mother must attend a dinner party at a house in the Nevada desert and collect some of the debt owed by one of the guests there. A storm descends and then murder is mixed in…how safe is she, and how can she get out without compromising herself?

This is long on some effective scene-setting and short on everything else — I couldn’t tell the characters apart, the murder happens far too late and is resolved almost instantly — but Dolson stirs in the various elements well, and could have written a neat little detective story if that was where her interest lay. Again, doesn’t break any of Knox’s rules, though. What is going on?

‘The Intruder’ by Martin Edwards: Finding incontrovertible evidence that his wife is having an affair, a man decides to take matters into his own hands…

An evocative slow burn of a story, superbly written so that it feels half as long as it is, whose final Knox-flouting revelation is a perfect encapsulation of the difference between detective fiction and thrillers. A clever naming device, too, makes it one of those stories where an author cold falsely claimed to have clued you in, but Edwards is an old hand at this and knows exactly how playfully unfair he’s being. Very enjoyable.

‘The Ditch’ by Greg Herren: Following an urgent night-time summons from his best friend, a teenage boy confronts a horrible scene…and that’s only the beginning of his problems.

This demonstrates the purpose of the Decalogue: to guarantee that you don’t start off reading something you assume to be criminous only for it to sit in a different genre entirely. It’s well-written, but the casual deployment of a certain unpleasant topic (rot13: puvyq nohfr) reminded me why I don’t read a lot of modern fiction, and, in light of this, it contains one of the most unfortunate turns of phrase imaginable. Good for what it is, but feels a little out of place despite doing exactly what it’s supposed to.

‘Dichondra’ by Naomi Hirahara: An elderly Japanese gardener is hired to work at the house of a young billionaire. Then the billionaire is found murdered. Whodunnit?

I found this one is a little odd — there’s no consistent point of view, too much irrelevant information clouds proceedings, the plotting is staccato and awkward. And, once again, it doesn’t break any of Knox’s rules. It’s claimed that one character has an “intuition” about the murder, but she’s actually employing logical reasoning based on information she possesses. And, since we’re not with her when she discovers that information, it’s not technically withheld, either. So, I dunno. An interesting, uncommon milieu, but not for me.

‘Baby Trap’ by Toni L.P. Kelner: Following the death of her husband, a woman struggling to support her young baby inherits a house in the town where her ghastly mother-in-law lives. Can the two women co-exist in peace?

This is superb. Brilliantly structured, well-paced, revealing just the right amount of information so that you can’t be sure when you start being misled, and with a strong final reveal that makes you re-evaluate everything you just read. A genuinely great story which would stand well on its own without the need to know it’s a Knox-baiting one. Still no detection, but it’s difficult to mind when there’s this much cleverness on display.

‘The Stolen Tent’ by Richie Narvaez: A man is murdered while travelling by Zeppelin; thankfully he great detective Balthazar Miró and his assistant Dr. Dusfrene are on hand to investigate…

Your response to this will very much depend on how you take to its deliberately arch tone. I’m sorry to say that none of the humour landed for me, but we do at least finally have a detective and some good detection, and the Knox-flouting precept is neatly and cleverly done. It’s also a pleasant change for a foreign detective to be dropping in expressions in a mother tongue that isn’t French, so there’s still plenty to enjoy here even if you can’t quite get on board with the style.

‘The Rose City Vampire’ by Gigi Pandian: A woman wakes in the night to see a vampire hovering outside her window, and discovers that she has apparently had her neck bitten by the beast…yet her house is locked up and the alarm didn’t sound. A group of teenagers investigate.

Always pleasing to see a semi-impossible crime, but aside from the fact that the main character here is a gargoyle brought to life, does this break any of Knox’s rules? And being a gargoyle is hardly key, right? It’s not clairvoyance or telekinesis — the tasks performed by him could have been done by a human, they just might require a little more ingenuity. I’m torn on this one, because in all other regards it’s a fairly routine investigation…

‘Chin Yong Yun Goes to Church’ by S.J. Rozan: When the priest of a church on the edge of Chinatown appears to be conning his parishioners out of their money, the daughter of one of his victims approaches an unlikely private detective for help.

This is a fun little crime story, told in an engaging voice, but it doesn’t break any of Knox’s commandments. The main character is Chinese, sure, but Knox’s rule isn’t about the inclusion of Chinese people per se, it’s about avoiding lazy stereotypes. This is like saying that the Christian commandment is Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s ass, so it’s okay to covet their house, giant TV, and expensive car because none of that is livestock. However, such cavils aside, I liked this a great deal.

‘The Forlorn Penguin’ by Daniel Stashower: A Sherlock Holmes pastiche suddenly takes a wild turn, as the author’s situation is brought to the fore.

I like the unusual framing of this, especially how it veers across four lanes of traffic to become something very different, but then it settles into a slightly pedestrian groove and, while well-written, doesn’t really go anywhere. And again it doesn’t break any rules: the narrator tells of a story he wrote which did break four of Knox’s commandments, but this is not that story. And, look, this has happened enough in this collection now that I’m beginning to doubt my own critical faculties, so maybe take this observation with a pinch of salt, eh?

‘The Island Boy Detective Agency’ by Marcia Talley: Nine year-old James Jackson Judd, living on a small Mediterranean island and obsessed with Sherlock Holmes, must contend with his mother’s lover and his plans for their homestead.

This is superbly written — though not quite in the voice of a nine year-old, there’s a genuine precociousness to our narrator, and the world he inhabits is brought lightly to life. Plants one particular clue very adroitly, and is delightfully constructed, even if there’s very little detection in the main plot. A lovely surprise of a story, I might have to check out one of Talley’s novels — recommendations welcomed.

‘Ordeals’ by Art Taylor: While a servant stands by, a couple accuse each other, over dinner, of infidelity. As it happens, the husband has come prepared for such an eventuality…

The heavy tone of this is very well-managed, and while it couldn’t be more obvious where it’s going, even without the Knox framing, there’s again some good, light clewing and a surprising amount of world-building done in relatively little space. A good, sinister little tale that would have been even better without the bit about the strawberries. That was just…odd.

‘Knox Vomica’ by Peter Lovesey rounds things out, a poem which renders the Decalogue in rhyme and then goes about killing a variety of famous sleuths with gleeful, tongue-in-cheek abandon. This is light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek fun that goes about its happy trolling of the tropes of detective fiction in a great spirit. And, hey, least Lovesey meets the brief and manages to break all ten rules, too. Bonus!

Since I usually pick a top 5 for longer short story collections, let’s do that first:

1. ‘Baby Trap’ by Toni L.P. Kelner
2. ‘The Island Boy Detective Agency’ by Marcia Talley
3. ‘The Intruder’ by Martin Edwards
4. ‘Chin Yong Yun Goes to Church’ by S.J. Rozan
5. ‘Not Another Secret Passage Story’ by Donna Andrews

This collection offers a range of interesting tales from a variety of writers I would otherwise have been unlikely to read, and I’m definitely going to look into the work of a couple of them more deeply. The stories will appeal more to fans of crime writing than detective fiction, but if you’re willing to put a toe over the line and see how the two overlap there are some interesting ideas here that are well worth your time.

It’s perhaps a bit of a shame that some Knox rules are broken multiple times and others aren’t even touched — it would have been great to see modern crime writing apply itself to the whole Decalogue, given the debt owed to Knox and his contemporaries in making the genre reputable — but at the end of the day this just goes to show how relevant Knox’s guidance remains: no-one wants lazy racism in their stories, nor do we want to be excluded from proceedings by lack of fair play. So it’s an interesting undertaking that perhaps tells you even more about the importance of the Golden Age by the way it doesn’t do what I was hoping it would. Good, clean fun.

Anyone up for a Van Dine-busting collection? And why do I get the impression that such an undertaking would be no fun at all…?