Quotation

At the height of the Nazi blitz of London in 1940, special 'raid libraries' were set up at the reeking entrances to the underground shelters to supply, by popular demand, detective stories and nothing else. No more dramatic illustration can be imagined of the singular appeal of the once lowly and scorned whodunit as the chosen escapist literature of modern times in general and wartime in particular.
Howard Haycraft, from an essay published in the August 12, 1945 New York Times Book Review (Found on Nan's blog)