Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on October 10, 2003 at 10:42:17 from 195.93.32.7 user ACB.
In Reply to: Re: The REAL Big Five - looking in the wrong place posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on October 10, 2003 at 09:51:03:
"By 1906 Scotland Yard were regularly assisting provincial forces to investigate murders, invariably by the "Big Five" Chief Inspectors Arrow, Dew, Fox, Frost and Cane."
Found here: http://www.met.police.uk/history/archives.htm
That seems to be as far as Google will take us.
So what we know, thus far, is that the "Big Five" were the five Detective Chief Inspectors at Scotland Yard, the heads of the four London Divisions and the Head of the CID, who, from some time before 1906 would assist provincial police forces in investigating murders. These men seem to have been almost "household names", enjoying a measure of celebrity.
Britain had an astoundingly low crime rate, by today's standards, in AR's day (I seem to think that the crime rate started to rise in 1954, for some reason!) and presumably this system was modified as part of the sucessive waves of reform, at New Scotland Yard and elsewhere in the Police Service, in response to the increase in the crime rate.
The usage may have been reasonably commonplace in the 1930's. Would a reader, seeing the title, assume that the book was a detective story? It was written at what was perhaps the high water mark of classic British detective fiction, and we ought perhaps to consider whether it meets Dorothy Sayers' "tests" for a detective story. Has anyone got a copy to hand?