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Whodunnit? Clever Pipe-Smokers

The most famous detective ever is a fictional character – Sherlock Holmes

The most famous detective ever is a fictional character – Sherlock Holmes, whose lineage goes back to another super-smart pipe-smoker, Edgar Allan Poe's detective Auguste Dupin. The continuing appeal of whodunnits as stories in which order conquers crime and instability, continued through the 20th-century in American "pulps" like Black Mask, which published Dashiel Hammett's Sam Spade stories.

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24 minutes

Â鶹Éç World Service Archive

This programme was restored as part of the World Service archive project