It is the twenty-first century, the time of iPhones and iPads, yet the traditional English detective story is as popular as ever. The whole of Agatha Christie's oeuvre is available in various shapes and forms including first edition facsimiles, Kindle, comic strips and, even, electronic games. One can buy chronological omnibus editions of the novels of Ngaio Marsh and there are regular gatherings of the Lord Peter Wimsey and Albert Campion appreciation societies. And as though that were not enough the British Library Publishing Division has started bringing out forgotten gems of 1930s detective murder mysteries with nostalgic period covers and titles like Mystery in White and The Santa Claus Murder.
No matter what its detractors say, the old-fashioned whodunit is far from defunct – in fact, it is thriving – and I wonder how much of its current success could be attributed to the 'Downton Abbey trend': our latest preoccupation with a certain aristocratic way of life, never-to-be-admitted hankering after feudal fixities and longing for the kind of Technicolor, picture-postcard version of an England that surely only existed in some parallel universe.
All of my nine published murder mysteries masquerade as contemporary crime fiction thanks to references to wi-fi, CCTV, the Harry Potter phenomenon, debates over the the social acceptability or otherwise of the Duchess of Cambridge, the practicalities (or otherwise) of the 'Boris bike' and so on – but the truth is that they all follow the general rules and strictures established by the Golden Age of Detective Fiction – if not quite Father Ronald Knox's Decalogue. Despite the fact that they are central to a form that has been endlessly reduplicated, original sin and skulduggery among the upper classes continue to cast their spell unabated. Schadenfreude probably comes into it too – the kind of gloating over the discomfiture, inconveniencing and humiliation of those whose lifestyles are more exclusive and more privileged than ours. For most readers there exists a fascination about the incongruity of murder and mayhem in a grand setting, among people with illustrious names who have a position to maintain and for whom keeping up appearances is an intrinsic part of life.
Even though readers have become much more sophisticated than they were eighty years ago, the puzzle that is at the heart of the whodunit still accounts for its chief appeal. Every reasoning person enjoys matching their wits against the detective's and most aficionados will gladly suspend their disbelief in order to play the game of wits – so long as the story's plot is complex and intricate, yet 'manageable', the characters interesting and unusual, though realistic enough to be taken seriously – and there are enough suspenseful twists to drive the story forward.
In my latest murder mystery, The Killing of Olga Klimt, there is a valet who is even more manipulative and Machiavellian than Downton's footman Thomas and a hereditary peer of the realm whose feeling of family honour is so extravagantly monumental as to border on madness. Of course one can't write such stories without being tongue-in-cheek post-modern – it would be laughable – therefore, I invariably have my two detectives, Antonia Darcy and her husband Hugh, display a sense of amused awareness that what happens to them has happened before to others like them – to Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, Lord Peter and Harriet Vane, Nick and Nora Charles, Inspector Alleyn and Agatha Troy, to name but a few. Antonia and Hugh still say things like, 'Oh no, not again! Must we really get involved this time?' – though I believe they have now stopped wondering why circumstances keep forcing them to act like a pair of amateur sleuths in a dated roman policier.
I find that most of my readers enjoy the realisation that the author is in fact playing a game with them. 
R.T. Raichev is the author of The Antonia Darcy and Major Payne Mystery series. His latest book is The Killing of Olga Klimt. Olga Klimt knew that there might be a high price to pay for playing with the hearts of powerful men but when jealousy, obsession and deception come into play the stakes are higher than she ever could have anticipated. In this ninth investigation of Antonia Darcy and Major Payne, they are drawn into the most baffling case of murder and intrigue where nothing—not even the identity of the victim– is certain. R.T. Raichev’s post-modern twist on Victorian London and his penchant for composing the most intricate of murder mysteries means that nothing is ever quite what it seems ...