The Poisoned Chocolates Case [Hardcover]

Anthony Berkeley (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 299 pages
• Publisher: Pub. for The Crime Club, by Doubleday, Doran (1929)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0006AKTCI
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,291,822 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a delight!, March 25, 2001

By 

Cowboy Bill "cowboybill" (Omaha, NE USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Poisoned Chocolates Case (Paperback)

I read this book after seeing it mentioned over and over again on best-mysteries-of-all-time lists.

Berkeley's novel is built around a fictitious, famed detection club (no doubt based on a real club that had authors such as Christie, Sayers and Dickson Carr as members). The members of this illustrious club set out to solve a mystery revolving around a poisoned box of chocolates. Every sleuth turns in a seemingly plausible solution, each topping the previous person's explanation. Until the end, that is, when a less-than-likely member offers the most surprising (and probably correct) interpretation of the facts.

Not only is this a real puzzle of a book, but it gently and self-consciously tweaks the fair-play traditions and cliches of the ultra-British "Golden Age."

It's very clever, very funny, and reads like a shot. What else do you want from a mystery?

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A clever new device for an old-fashioned kind of mystery, April 8, 2002

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Poisoned Chocolates Case (Paperback)

It's British, it's amateurs solving a murder, the clues are all in front of you. What's better? And then on top of it all, this book gives us a crime club at which the members present their individual results and critique each other (with some dry wit at the expense of the genre). Great stuff.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very clever and inexpressibly bright!, December 5, 2005

By 

S. Schwartz "romonko" (alberta canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Poisoned Chocolates Case (A Roger Sheringham Case) (Paperback)

This is a very clever little mystery. It is easy to understand why Anthony Berkeley is considered to be the grandfather of the Golden Era of detective fiction. The book was written in 1929, but in spite of that date the mystery itself is not at all dated. The book is based on the premise of six amateur detectives given an unsolvable case by Scotland Yard. Each member of the Crime Club has to come up with a theory and point out the murderer. Each of the six come up with completely plausible solutions, but we don't actually find out the correct one until the last sleuth speaks. It is certainly a different take on "and then there was one". Berkeley certainly knew what he was about when he penned his detective stories! They are true gems.