The surge in interest in mysteries from the Golden Age has led to a revival of interest in many of that era's most creative writers. That certainly applies to Anthony Berkeley, one of the founders of the prestigious Detection Club, an organization which, over the years, can claim many fine and still popular mystery writers. Among Berkeley's best and cleverest books is The Poisoned Chocolates Case, originally published in 1929. It continues to draw comment and criticism even today, because...well, read the text of my audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, written several years ago. As always, it has been edited slightly to protect the innocent.
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Six respected members of society. Six intellectuals. Six amateur criminologists. And – among them – six different solutions to a particularly difficult murder case. Six solutions – each, unfortunately, pointing to a different suspect. It’s a dilemma for the detectives – and a delight for the reader – in The Poisoned Chocolates Case, a Golden Age classic by Anthony Berkeley.
A few months ago, on this podcast, I reviewed an excellent collection of short stories by Anthony Berkeley, called The Avenging Chance and Other Stories. The lead story in that book, “The Avenging Chance,” is a 1929 short story featuring a murder case, solved by Berkeley’s detective, Roger Sheringham. I pointed out that “The Avenging Chance” was a much shorter version of the then-out-of-print classic book, The Poisoned Chocolates Case, and lamented its absence.
Well, The Poisoned Chocolates Case is back in print – and what a delight it is. The crime here – carried out with the poisoned chocolates of the title – is the same as in the short story, as are some of the major characters, including both Roger Sheringham and his friend, Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Moresby. But the circumstances are somewhat different.
Sheringham, in this book, is the president of a small group called the Crime Circle. He and the other five members are all amateur criminologists. Several, including Sheringham, are writers. One is a defense attorney. Another is a playwright. And so on. All are students, not only of detective fiction, but real-life mysteries as well.
Chief Inspector Moresby comes to the circle with a case of murder on which the police have made little headway – the poisoned chocolates case. There is very little physical evidence. Sheringham proposes – with the chief inspector’s blessing – to allow the members of his crime circle to investigate the case, each acting independently, and to come back to the group a week later with their own theories about what happened.
The amateurs do so – and what the reader is given, then, is a succession of individual reports. In each, one member of the club outlines a remarkably complete theory which quite clearly points to one particular individual as the murderer.
Unfortunately, each successive member of the club comes up with a new solution which largely invalidates the work of the previous investigators – until the final revelations come up with a wonderful and rather shocking conclusion to the book.
In the course of these revelations, Sheringham himself presents the solution which we saw earlier in the short story version called "The Avenging Chance" – only that solution is invalidated this time by the next speaker. Anthony Berkeley clearly enjoys himself tremendously during the course of this. He quite fairly presents the readers with the clues uncovered by each of these amateurs in turn, inviting us to see if we can make more sense of it than his characters are doing. It is a classic of fair play, which is one reason why it is generally quite highly regarded as one of the finest Golden Age mysteries.
Anthony Berkeley – the pen name of Anthony Berkeley Cox – had a marvelous sense of humor, and there is a great deal of humor on display here. He can be merciless in his character descriptions. For example, here is his description of Sir Charles Wildman, a member of the crime circle and a prominent and rich defense attorney. Berkeley writes:
“There was no one at the Bar who could so convincingly distort an honest but awkward fact into carrying an entirely different interpretation from that which any ordinary person (counsel for the prosecution, for instance) would have put upon it. He could take that fact, look it boldly in the face, twist it round, read a message from the back of its neck, turn it inside out and detect auguries in its entrails, dance triumphantly on its corpse, pulverize it completely, re-mould it if necessary into an utterly different shape, and finally, if the fact still had the temerity to retain any vestige of its primary aspect, bellow at it in the most terrifying manner. If that failed, he was quite prepared to weep at it in open court.”
I enjoy that, and it’s typical of the care which Berkeley lavishes on writing about his characters. There is also humor in the author’s sense of parody, for the different approaches taken by the members of the crime circle neatly mirror and even parody many of the types of detectives popular in Golden Age literature – the deductive reasoner, the inductive and intuitive investigator, the one who relies on just-the-facts, another who relies on the psychology of the supposed killer.
And – without giving any of it away – the ending of the book, I think, is perfect and quite in keeping with the overall tone and spirit of the story.
I am delighted that Anthony Berkeley’s The Poisoned Chocolates Case is back in print. If you enjoy the classic Golden Age puzzle mystery, fairly presented, with more than a touch of humor, then you are very likely to enjoy this book.
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Next: Death of a Peer (original title: Surfeit of Lampreys), by Ngaio Marsh.
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