"Something between Edgar Allan Poe’s detective prodigy of the preternatural and Jane Austen’s ‘neighbourhood of voluntary spies,’ Christie’s and Bowers’s amateur sleuths have a nose for foul play and an unflinching sense of civic duty and moral courage. A welcome intervention in a critically neglected genre, Hugo Walter’s timely study offers rare insight into the history, influence, and mechanics of the modern ‘whodunit? ’. While focused on Christie and Bowers unassuming-but-intrepid protagonists, this engaging work offers a much broader sociology of citizen detectives and the allure of their uncanny capacity to inhabit diabolical genius and their moral obligation to even the score." —Gregory S. Jackson, Rutgers University