Poisoned Chocolates Case

Rating:
Summary: What a delight!
Review: 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?

Rating:
Summary: A clever new device for an old-fashioned kind of mystery
Review: 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.