Just how golden was the golden age of crime fiction? For some, the celebrated flowering of the detective story in the 1920s and 30s gave us enduringly popular, elegantly written novels that have yet to be bettered. The period introduced us to household names such as Christie, Sayers, Allingham and Tey, and established detective fiction as a brand through those addictively collectable green and white Penguins. For others, golden age or “cosy” crime, is a lowbrow, sanitised form of fiction; class-ridden and formulaic, and full of meddlesome British spinsters and eccentric foreigners whose lives (and deaths) were somehow less real than those developing concurrently on the hardboiled American streets.

It’s no mystery that detective stories flourished in Britain after the first world war: loss, violence and social change are at the heart of most crime novels, and there’s surely no period in our history when all three were experienced more deeply. But it took the second world war and its aftermath to bring them to maturity; many of the authors whose careers began 20 years earlier wrote their best books in the 1940s and 50s.

The sinister sparkle of murder is still there, as is the fair-play puzzle and the uncomfortable intrusion of the past. But the order and resolution that appealed in the first wave of golden age novels are far less common in the second. These novels simmer with a restlessness that still feels urgent. They struggle with injustice and the shortcomings of the law. The innocent suffer and the culprit isn’t always caught, but the noose is a tangible presence. Murderers are more complex, and the body in the library finally leaves a stain on the carpet. These are stories that are so much more than puzzles.

That’s what inspired me to write books that honour the golden age, most obviously through my series character, the real-life author Josephine Tey. She consistently tore up the rule book in her unsettling, highly engaging novels. By showing so effectively the aftermath of crime, she paved the way for modern novels to treat crime as an entertainment while never forgetting its painful reality. That, for me, is the true spirit of the golden age. Here are 10 novels that celebrate it.

1. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (1939)

Christie was ruthless with her characters and readers. Nothing is off-limits: the child did it; the policeman did it; they all did it. No pillar of the community was above suspicion. It’s hard to think of a more brutal novel than this groundbreaking, characteristically ingenious story of 10 people invited to a small island, only to be killed off one by one. It is almost unbearably claustrophobic and its dazzling solution is a scream against injustice.

Elizabeth Mackintosh (1897-1952), who wrote mystery novels under the nom de plume of Josephine Tey. Photograph: Sasha/Getty Images

2. Green for Danger by Christianna Brand (1944)

The creator of the original Nanny McPhee stories also wrote great crime novels. Brand’s books are peopled with subtle, beautifully drawn characters and richly evocative of their time and place. Green for Danger is set in a military hospital during the second world war, where a patient’s death is the catalyst to a tale of intrigue, jealousy and frustrated passions. Witty and cleverly plotted, the book is an unsentimental tribute to the doctors and nurses who calmly carried on working as the bombs fell around them.

3. To Love and Be Wise by Josephine Tey (1950)

Here Tey demonstrates an extraordinary understanding of the psychology of a killer – not a crazed figure of evil, but an ordinary person, who, through extremes of love or obsession, might decide that someone no longer deserves to live. “I’ve done a lot of good solid hating in my time,” the author once admitted to a friend, “and the curious thing is that although I did nothing, the people I hated all went satisfyingly to the bad.” This book is an unsettling, ingenious reminder of what we’re all capable of.

4. An English Murder by Cyril Hare (1951)

As the glut of reissued Christmas mysteries testifies, there’s something appealing about the combination of sherry, fruit cake and sudden death. Hare’s is one of the best: a classy, entertaining country house murder that respects tradition while extending its boundaries.

5. The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham (1952)

Not every golden age novel is set in a village: Allingham’s beautifully evoked fog-bound London is a character in its own right, synonymous with the palpable sense of evil that seeps from the pages. Her ruthless, psychopathic killer Jack Havoc is a memorably chilling creation. A psychological thriller rather than a classic whodunnit, the battle between good and evil is convincingly played out in the genteel squares and dark alleyways of postwar England’s capital.

6. The Killings at Badger’s Drift by Caroline Graham (1987)

A tranquil English village, the death of a well-loved spinster – you could be forgiven for placing this 50 years earlier were it not for the barbed humour that is sometimes lost in the parallel TV world of Midsomer. Dedicated to Christianna Brand, this novel established Graham as the natural successor to Brand’s impeccable plotting.

Margery Allingham, feeding one of her dogs at home. Photograph: POPPERFOTO

7. Death in Holy Orders by PD James (2001)

James did more than anyone to reinvigorate the classic English detective story, using golden age conventions to create novels that live and breathe for modern readers. For me, this is her masterpiece. Set in a remote theological college on the Suffolk coast, the book builds an intense picture of the fear, rage and desperation experienced by a society under threat. The skies and sea are the dominant forces, a powerful symbol of endurance against which human dramas feel both transient and shocking.

8. The Act of Roger Murgatroyd by Gilbert Adair (2006)

Adair’s Evadne Mount trilogy (this was followed by A Mysterious Affair of Style and And Then There Was No One) is both a celebration and parody of the golden age, and Christie in particular. Subtitled “An Entertainment”, this novel is exactly that, packed as tightly as Miss Marple’s suitcase with the classic ingredients – a locked room, a rambling mansion, an unpopular victim – and authentic down to the controversial inclusion of racism, snobbery and antisemitic remarks found in many golden age originals.

9. Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz (2016)

A dark and stylish take on the classic golden age novel. Alan Conway, creator of Atticus Pund (a Poirot-esque outsider who solves mysteries in 1950s England), provides clues to his own death in an unfinished manuscript. Magpie Murders works on many levels, but – as with everything Horowitz touches – the voice is pitch-perfect, and his impeccable honouring of the golden age greats is so addictive that you long for Atticus Pund to be coaxed from a premature retirement.

10. The Truants by Kate Weinberg (2019)

This list comes full circle with this intriguing and recent debut. English fresher Jess Walker is studying Agatha Christie, wrestling with the author as both a feminist revolutionary and purveyor of order and compromise. But Christie ultimately becomes less fascinating than Walker’s charismatic tutor. After surprising twists, Weinberg provides a satisfying conclusion while asking the question: does a mystery lose its magic once it’s solved?

• Sorry for the Dead by Nicola Upson is published by Faber & Faber (£12.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p on all online orders over £15.