"She sounds a bit of a fool," commented Sir Charles.

"She looks like a bit of a fool," agreed Mr. Bradley. "She talks like a bit of a fool. Meeting her at a tea-fight, I should have said she is a bit of a fool. And yet she carried through a really cleverly planned murder, so I don't see how she can be a bit of a fool."

"It didn't occur to you," remarked Miss Dammers, "that perhaps she never did anything of the sort?"

"Well, no," Mr. Bradley had to confess. "I'm afraid it didn't."

I believe this is the first time I've read a mystery novel by Anthony Berkeley. It won't be the last - his work strikes me as good enough to be worth further study, although I confess that one of the things I want to study is whether or not he wrote any classic whodunits, because I fear The Poisoned Chocolates Case, despite saying "Mystery" on the cover and dating back to 1929 according to the copyright information, is not really a "fair play" whodunit according to the standards I tend to expect from mystery novels written in that bygone era that is sometimes referred to as the Golden Age of Detection

On the plus side, Berkeley's writing style is lively enough and witty enough to please me - not nearly so stuffy as one might expect from a book written way back in the 1920s.

Basic Background

A box of chocolates was mailed to notorious womanizer Sir Eustace Pennefather, Baronet, at his club in London. In a cover letter, the package was purported to be a free sample from the manufacturer, who was seeking feedback on the appeal of a new brand from "Men of Taste." Sir Eustace, who had no interest in writing a glowing testimonial for a candy company, ended up giving the box to a fellow club member, who took it home and gave it to his wife, who ate several of the chocolates and died of poison. Scotland Yard has been looking into the case - but as the novel starts, the Yard has allegedly tried every reasonable line of inquiry it can think of, and gotten absolutely nowhere.

Roger Sherringham (apparently an amateur detective in one or more previous books by Berkeley) has decided, and announces to his friends in the first scene, that their recently formed group of amateur criminology enthusiasts, the Crimes Circle, should tackle the case themselves. Each member of the Circle will pursue a quick and separate investigation as he sees fit for the next week, and then they will meet on six nights in a row to give each member as much time as he needs to lay out whatever "solution," certain or tentative, he may have come up with. The suggestion is accepted, and they draw lots to see in what sequence they will present their theories and conclusions. And there we have it: The basic structure of the entire novel has now been laid out for us in advance!

Six people speak on six consecutive nights, and they build up cases against seven suspects. No suspect is accused by two different speakers, but one speaker generously offers two different solutions.

Of course, after each person has presented his or her “solution,” the other five members of the Circle are welcome to try to poke holes in it, although they don’t always manage to do so immediately. But then the next night, someone else can be counted upon to present another case that carries some degree of conviction with it.

In the order in which they present their various solutions to the Poisoned Chocolates Case, the six members of the Crimes Circle are:

Sir Charles Wildman, a famous criminal lawyer who has, in his day, managed to extricate many a defendant (probably guilty ones in many cases) by convincing the jury of the existence of a reasonable doubt.

Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, a famous dramatist who apparently specializes in shameless melodrama, judging by her mannerisms in her private life as well.

Mr. Morton Harrogate Bradley, who is described as the most brilliant living writer of detective stories.

Mr. Roger Sherringham, organizer and president of the Crimes Circle, who is also a published author, and the principal viewpoint character (although we see something of just about everyone's viewpoint in one passage or another). However, it seems to me that the exact nature of his literary endeavors is left rather vague. Nonfiction about criminal cases, perhaps? Whatever his field may be, he has a passion for the subject of criminology.

Miss Alicia Dammers, a young woman who is quite attractive, very intelligent, and writes novels with a heavy psychological emphasis. (Never writes mystery novels, however, although she apparently has read her fair share of such works by Mr. Bradley and various other authors.)

Mr. Ambrose Chitterwick, “who was not famous at all, a mild little man of no particular appearance who had been even more surprised at being admitted to this company of personages than they had been at finding him amongst them.” To make it into the Circle, he had to pass some tests proving a good solid knowledge of criminology, so apparently he (like all the others) is very well-read in the subject but, unlike most of them, not because he intended to use a thorough knowledge of the history of crime and the thought processes of the criminal mind in connection with his own profession.

Here is an additional sample of Berkeley's engaging way of expressing himself, in describing one of his principal characters.

Facts were very dear to Sir Charles. More, they were meat and drink to him. His income of roughly thirty thousand pounds a year was derived entirely from the masterful way in which he was able to handle facts. There was no one at the bar who could so convincingly distort an honest but awkward fact into carrying an entirely different interpretation from that which any ordinary person (counsel for the prosecution, for instance) would have put upon it. He could take that fact, look it boldly in the face, twist it round, read a message from the back of its neck, turn it inside out and detect auguries in its entrails, dance triumphantly on its corpse, pulverise it completely, remould it if necessary into an utterly different shape, and finally, if the fact still had the temerity to retain any vestige of its primary aspect, bellow at it in the most terrifying manner. If that failed he was quite prepared to weep at it in open court.

So it's well-written, by my tastes. But is this a “fair play” mystery? I would have to say “No.” Most, possibly all, of the amateur detectives present "facts" that are new and strange to us, so that even if they are relevant, we didn't have much time to figure out what they might mean until a particular detective was lecturing at length on that very subject. (In most cases, the detective who was speaking turns out to have been wrong in at least some of his or her conclusions and assumptions, but still . . .)

Of course, much of this was mandated by the obvious structure of the novel. We know from the start that meek and mild Mr. Chitterwick, the only one of the six who is neither a successful writer nor a prominent criminal lawyer, is scheduled to be the last to offer his own solution to the Poisoned Chocolates Case. Since it would be ruinous to the plot to have, say, the third person to speak be the one who offered the correct solution, leaving the fourth, fifth, and sixth speakers utterly redundant, it follows that either Mr. Chitterwick will have found the correct solution himself, or – at the very least – that the solution will not be found until after he has spoken at length, even if someone else helps tie up all the loose ends based on information and theories which Mr. Chitterwick plants in the minds of his listeners.

With that in mind, you could plausibly argue that the first five speakers, whose various "solutions" and the criticisms thereof fill up so much of the novel, are not presenting anything that was meant to be taken as a “Fair Play Solution” at all! Instead, their reports on their investigations and deductions and inductions were only to be taken as part of the preliminary material building up to a finale, providing interesting insights into their own different mentalities, and incidentally clues for both the reader and Mr. Chitterwick to draw upon in seeking the best possible solution.

However, even Mr. Chitterwick mentions “facts” which had not previously been established in anything we saw happening onstage, but which he had apparently managed to dig out in amateur detective work which occurred “between scenes.” So even if we only accept Mr. Chitterwick as the only true detective in this particular story, we are still forced to acknowledge that the author is not “playing fair” when it comes to having the detective’s final deductions rest upon a foundation of facts to which the reader should also have been previously exposed.

I reluctantly conclude that this book is not a “detective story” in the classic sense at all. It is simply a fairly mainstream novel that largely features a group of six people sitting around talking (and talking, and talking, and talking) about a murder case in which they have all decided to take an interest. Nor is the ending so neat and tidy as one might hope for in a traditional mystery novel.

Despite which, I enjoyed reading it. I give it four stars out of five because it was above-average entertainment for a few hours, but when I consider it as a purported mystery novel I can't say it is fully up to expectations.


Recommended: Yes