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The Poisoned Chocolates Case

First published: 1929
Pages: 174

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About this book

A box of liqueur chocolates laced with nitrobenzene kills the wrong person, and Scotland Yard is baffled, so the matter lands before the Crimes Circle, a small club of amateur criminologists who meet to test their wits on real murders. One by one, six members lay out a complete solution, each naming a different culprit and each demolishing the theory that came before. Anthony Berkeley turns the whodunit into a playful argument about how easily the same set of facts bends toward whatever conclusion a clever mind prefers. Published in 1929 and built around his detective Roger Sheringham, it remains one of the most admired experiments of the Golden Age, endlessly copied for its cascade of false certainties. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available to download.

About the author

Anthony Berkeley

Anthony Berkeley Cox (1893-1971) was an English crime novelist who helped found the Detection Club and pushed the genre toward psychology and irony. Writing also as Francis Iles, he created the fallible sleuth Roger Sheringham and pioneered the inverted crime story with Malice Aforethought.