![]() ![]() ![]() Over a period of days each person presents their solution, with the others seeing if they can find flaws in it. The plot revolves around a group of people attempting to solve a mysterious murder involving you, guessed it, a box of poisoned chocolates. One can almost imagine Berkeley wondering: “What if the reader knew from the first paragraph who the murderer was? How would one generate suspense?” Thereon, he pioneered the inverted mystery, told from the criminal’s point of view or, in a further twist, from the perspective of the victim. This is a brilliant mystery from the golden age of crime fiction by Anthony Berkeley. Nevertheless, Berkeley parted company with them, particularly with Christie-even though she did prove to be, if not the most durable, certainly the most enduring of the quartet-as he moved from the mystery as intellectual conundrum toward an exploration of the limits within which the genre could sustain psychology and suspense. Indeed, John Dickson Carr, himself a giant, called Berkeley’s The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929) one of the best detective stories ever written. Van Dine as one of the four giants in the field. In the 1920’s, he was frequently linked with Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Anthony Berkeley achieved fame during one of the periods in which mystery writing was ascendant. ![]()
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