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Agatha Christie broke rule #9 in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

Also, for those of you that love novels by Josephine Tey and Dorothy Sayers, you should add Ngaio Marsh to your list. I don't know why she's rarely mentioned, but she wrote many wonderful detective novels. She started writing in the mid 30s and her last novel was published in 1980. Her first few novels were good (not great) but after just the first few, she was a consummate writer.

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Honestly curious—what do you think he meant by the "No Chinamen" rule, if you believe he didn't intend to be racist? Thanks for a great article!

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The "No Chinaman rule" was a reaction to, and criticism of, racial cliches prevalent in 1920s English writing.

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