Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English with another billion in over 70 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 20 plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.

Robert Bruce Montgomery was born in Buckinghamshire in 1921, and was a golden age crime writer as well as a successful concert pianist and composer. Under the pseudonym Edmund Crispin, he wrote 9 detective novels and 42 short stories. In addition to his reputation as a leader in the field of mystery genre, he contributed to many periodicals and newspapers and edited sci-fi anthologies. After the golden years of the 1950s he retired from the limelight to Devonshire until his death in 1978.

John Rhode was born Cecil Street in 1884. Although little is known about him he enjoyed a distinguised military career and was awarded an OBE. He was the author of 140 novels under the names John Rhode, Miles Burton and Cecil Wade. Cecil Street died in 1964.