When did you begin to read crime fiction?

I guess the roots of my love for crime fiction must stem from my avid consumption of Enid Blyton as a pre-teen (see an earlier post). That had a lot to do with what was available to Australian children in the 1950s. And then in high school, I met Charles Dickens, whose novels are riddled with unanswered questions.

In 1962 I left home, came to Adelaide to attend teachers' college. And that really marks the beginning of my path to crime fiction addict.

At the time, when I was reading English at Adelaide University, Agatha Christie, Daphne du Maurier, Ngaio Marsh and Georges Simenon were my light relief. I didn't realise at the time that the grounding I was getting in English literature 1300 to the present day was going to be so important. I didn't realise either that mystery was such an important plot device in many of the classical novels that I was reading, or indeed, that so many of my favourite crime fiction authors would have the same classical education that I had. But part of my selection of the genre was due to the ready availability of Fontana and green Penguin crime fiction paperbacks in a local department store.

By the time I began to keep my "little green book" in 1975, my record now of over 3,000 titles, their authors, and the date I completed reading the book, you can see I am well on my way down the slippery slope of crime fiction addition, although other genres still feature in the early years.

At the time (1975) I was travelling through Asia with friends, prior to joining Fat Albert in Kathmandu in March, a bus that delivered us more or less safely to London in early May.

By the early 1980s crime fiction was my preferred genre. And now 30 years on, if I'm reading anything else, it has to be for a very good reason or I find myself constantly begrudging, what, underneath it all, I think is a waste of good reading time.

So there's my story, what's yours?
If this post inspires a similar one on your blog, let me know, and link to mine.