The Poisoned Chocolates Case
First edition cover
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| Author | Anthony Berkeley |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Detective fiction |
| Publisher | Collins |
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Publication date
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1929 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
| Preceded by | The Silk Stocking Murders |
| Followed by | The Piccadilly Murder |
The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929) is a detective novel by Anthony Berkeley set in 1920s London in which a group of armchair detectives, who have founded the "Crimes Circle", formulate theories on a recent murder case Scotland Yard has been unable to solve. Each of the six members, including their president, Berkeley's amateur sleuth Roger Sheringham, arrives at an altogether different solution as to the motive and the identity of the perpetrator, and also applies different methods of detection (basically deductive or inductive or a combination of both). Completely devoid of brutality but containing a lot of subtle, tongue-in-cheek humour instead, The Poisoned Chocolates Case is one of the classic whodunnits of the so-called Golden Age of detective fiction. As at least six plausible explanations of what really happened are put forward one after the other, the reader—just like the members of the Crimes Circle themselves—is kept guessing right up to the final pages of the book.
One of the most unusual, and possibly unique, features of the book is that, while it appears at first sight to be an expanded version of Berkeley's short story "The Avenging Chance", the eventual solution of the crime in the full-length novel is quite different from that in the short story. (In fact, the solution of "The Avenging Chance" is one of the suggested explanations in the novel which turns out to be false.)
After arriving at his London club at 10:30 am precisely,which he has been doing every morning for many years, Sir Eustace Pennefather, a known womanizer whose divorce from his current wife is pending, receives a complimentary box of chocolates through the post. Disapproving of such modern marketing techniques, Sir Eustace is about to throw away the chocolates in disgust but changes his mind when he learns that Graham Bendix, another member of the club whom he hardly knows, has lost a bet with his wife Joan and now owes her a box of chocolates. Bendix takes the box home and, after lunch, tries out the new confectionery together with his wife. A few hours later Joan Bendix is dead, whereas her husband, who has eaten far less of the chocolate, is taken seriously ill and hospitalized (but later recovers). The police can establish a few facts beyond any doubt: that the parcel was posted the previous evening near The Strand; that the poison that was injected into each of the chocolates is nitrobenzene; and that the accompanying letter was typewritten on a piece of stationery from the manufacturers of the chocolates but not composed or sent by them.
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