The Scoop and Behind the Screen
Dust-jacket illustration of the first UK edition
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| Author |
Hugh Walpole Agatha Christie Dorothy L. Sayers Anthony Berkeley E.C. Bentley Ronald Knox Freeman Wills Crofts Clemence Dane |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Crime novel |
| Publisher | Victor Gollancz Ltd |
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Publication date
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1983 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 184 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 9462119 |
The Scoop and Behind the Screen are both collaborative detective serials written by members of the Detection Club which were broadcast weekly by their authors on the BBC National Programme in 1930 and 1931 with the scripts then being published in The Listener within a week after broadcast. The two serials were first published in book form in the UK by Victor Gollancz Ltd in 1983 and in the US by Harper & Row in 1984. The UK edition retailed at £6.95.
Julian Symons, then President of the club (1983), explains in his introduction: "...The present volume... was written to provide funds so that club premises might be acquired. Other books with the same purpose, also the product of several hands, were The Floating Admiral (1931), ... Ask a Policeman (1933), ... and ... Verdict of Thirteen. ..."
The episodes, contributors, transmission and magazine publication details of this serial are as follows (all episodes were transmitted from 9.25pm to 9.40pm):
In The Listener (and subsequently in the book version), four of the episodes were untitled, the exceptions being the fourth and sixth, which were given the titles In the Aspidistra and Mr Parsons on the Case respectively.
As announced in The Guardian on 2 December 1930, Behind the Screen proved popular enough for the BBC to commission a second serial, this time in twelve instalments.
The episodes, contributors, transmission and magazine publication details of this serial are as follows (all episodes were transmitted from 9.25pm to 9.40pm except for episode 7):
In The Listener the first two instalments were entitled Over the Wire and At the Inquest. The book version of the serial (1983) replicates these chapter titles.
Weedon, A. '“Behind the Screen” and “The Scoop”’: a cross-media experiment in publishing and broadcasting crime fiction in the early 1930s' Media History, 13 (1), 2007, pp. 43 – 60.
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