I hope this finds all readers well. I see that most of my fellow bloggers have been busy and I applaud them for keeping up their good work. Their offerings and insights have brought me joy and I am grateful! I seem to have had an episode of brain-fog which is only now starting to lift slowly. It’s not that I didn’t do anything, I have a day-job… and in my free hours I have pottered about, and one of the pleasant things I did was to re-visit my favourite ‘Golden Age’ crime stories. So I was excited to come across this card game from the late 1930s!
Lid of box with Crime Club masked gunman ‘Logo’ 
Cover of instruction booklet
I have the more common 2nd edition (1938 -1940), which comes in dark green box (the lid is padded) and with green-backed cards. A special card for Peter Cheyney is glued to the bottom of the box. The first edition (1935) comes in a dark purple box, with card backs of purple. Both editions can still be found on auction sites, although the first edition is, unsurprisingly, much rarer.
Peter Cheyney was a popular author of British detective and mystery books in the 1930s and 40s. He is probably best known for creating Lemmy Caution. Eddie Constantine played this character in a series of French movies mostly based on the books. The Crime Club was either lucky or paid Mr Cheyney handsomely to get him to give his name to this card game.
Or it was simply good marketing. The game contains 50 cards, mostly made of characters from Peter Cheyney’s books, but there’s also Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot . The cards are made up of 6 suits with 8 cards in each suit. There are:
3 (yellow, blue and red) detective suits:
Each detective has an assistant:
and 3 crook (blue, purple and green) suits.
They have assistants, too, of course!
Then there are objects and locations for each suit:
I have to admit, I found the rules too much to take in (at present, I will want to play at least one round!) and so far, am happy just looking at the cards – I think they are fabulous. Sadly, as is too often the case, the illustrator is not named.
Thank you for reading.
Oh, me like! A lot!
(You’re so right, we all have day jobs. If we didn’t, blogging would be so much more fun …)
Thank you! Your blog is fun ( for me) , I am glad you are making time for it x
Thank you for your kind words. It really is difficult to find the time sometimes but once you started, it’s also really hard to stop … especially with fans like you! 🙂 xx
xxx
Very, very cool.
Thank you so much 😊
What a great game! As a fan of mysteries, I think this would be so much fun to play. The first mystery is, who was the illustrator? 🙂
Thank you! I agree, and will continue my investigation 😊🕵️♀️
Hiya Wibi, hope all is well 🙂 Superb set of cards and art, thanks for sharing. Yes, so often the artists aren’t credited, shame. I particularly like Superintendent Battle (what a cool name!), Carlotta and Janet Murch. How creepy is that card ‘Body’ with the stiff behind the curtains!!
Thank you, TVTA, all is well -and thank you for your kind words. I love your new site!
Good stuff, Wibi, glad 🙂 So pleased you like my sister site!
I love the cards…. please work out a way we can play the game online 🙂
Or I can imagine a postmodern novel…..
I agree the ‘Body’ card is a little disturbing…….
Thanx for a gr8 post.
This game (and the cards) is fascination. Thanks for sharing.