Come to London clubland in 1923, and follow Richard Hannay on the trail of a riddling rhyme and secret plots to overthrow civilisation as we know it. In John Buchan's The Three Hostages, human evil battles with the manners of the gentleman's club, and north London is revealed as a den of criminality and sin. For those who live north of the river.

In the middle of the Second World War, Lady Carados found a dead woman in her son's bed, so she decided to move it somewhere else, which is why Albert Campion got involved because the body ended up in his bed instead. In Margery Allingham's Coroner's Pidgin, Campion is struggling with sleep deprivation, the blackout, familiar streets bombed out of recognition, and the bizarre dislocations of life in a Blitzed London. He feels his way through mental fog to work out who killed whom, and who is continuing to try to kill others. How big does a national war hero have to be before he is above suspicion? How aristocratic do you have to be before the law can't touch you? For readers who like to see more than one step ahead.

We're plunged into 1930s high society, riddled with blackmail, drugs and wicked little gambling dens. Girls have gone back to being chaperoned, and wives are deceiving their husbands. It's all rather sordid, and then Lord Robert gets suffocated in a taxi on the way back from the heady, glittering, gossiping Carrados ball. Hear all about the social humiliation that Death in a White Tie, a Golden Age detective novel by Ngaio Marsh, secretly conceals. For those who prefer to dance until three in the morning.

One of the most under-rated, and one of the best writers of Golden Age Detection, Josephine Tey, tells us a dark little tale about how Miss Pym's psychology can detect a murder in a gymnasium, in a hothouse single-sex environment, where desperation that the best job goes to the best person causes passions to spill out from the tightly buttoned blouses of perfect English gym teachers. A magnificent, Machiavellian murder in the cleanest surroundings. For those who prefer working on the mat to the high bars.

Another 1930s detective novel about drugs, but with more variety: not just cocaine, but cigarettes and the subjugation of the masses' free will by advertising. Dorothy L Sayers feeds her public's addiction for more Lord Peter Wimsey with Murder Must Advertise, a great novel about murder and treachery in the office lives of advertising executives and high diving in high society. For those who prefer a Daimler to a Ford.

Before he wrote The Sword in the Stone, T H White tried to gatecrash the 1930s party of detective novelists critiqueing their own society. He tackled drugs, murder, snobbery, loyalty, fast cars and literary allusion. He played with the conventions of the detective novel and produced a small but perfect classic of detective fiction. For readers who prefer to ride their horses astride.

This podcast is about Margery Allingham's 1955 novel The Beckoning Lady. A classic detective story with her enigmatic Mr Campion, set in a magical hazy midsummer, featuring more English eccentrics than you can shake a stick at, and the immortal Magersfontein Lugg. Also contains lessons for the reduction of teenage confusion, a remedy involving rhubarb leaves for the prevention of moon madness, and three corpses. For those who like their detection hidden in very polite suspense.