<div>Six &ldquo;perfect murders&rdquo; by Margery Allingham, Dorothy L. Sayers, and other Golden Age Mystery authors of the Detection Club&mdash;plus an essay by Agatha Christie. Founded in England in the 1930s, the Detection Club brought together an impressive array of Golden Age Mystery authors. Their projects included The Floating Admiral, a whodunit in which twelve different writers contributed individual chapters, as well as Ask a Policeman, another collaboration in which the mystery writers swapped detectives to solve a murder. In Six Against the Yard, a half dozen mystery masters&mdash;Margery Allingham, Father Ronald Knox, Anthony Berkeley, Russell Thorndike, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Freeman Wills Crofts&mdash;each create a perfect crime, a seemingly unsolvable mystery. The stories are then analyzed by Ex-Superintendent Cornish, C.I.D., a real-life retired police detective, to see if they would indeed stump Scotland Yard. This edition also features an afterword by inaugural Detection Club member Agatha Christie on a true unsolved case of arsenic poisoning in Britain in 1929. </div>

Six Against the Yard

<div>It&rsquo;s &ldquo;great fun&rdquo; when a baker&rsquo;s dozen of Golden Age authors collaborate on a whodunit&mdash;including Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and G. K. Chesterton (The Guardian). Originally published in 1931, The Floating Admiral is a classic literary collaboration by members of the Detection Club, in which each chapter is written by a different mystery author, with G. K. Chesterton adding a prologue after the novel was completed. Each writer was tasked with building on what the previous writer created, without ignoring or avoiding whatever plot points had come before. Although Anthony Berkeley wrote the definitive conclusion to the mystery in his final chapter, the writers all provided their own individual solutions, each in a sealed envelope, which appear in the appendix. In the words of Dorothy L. Sayers in her introduction, the spirit of the project was that of a &ldquo;detection game,&rdquo; for the amusement of the authors&mdash;and their readers. In the sleepy English seaside village of Whynmouth, an old sailor discovers a corpse floating serenely in a rowboat owned by the local vicar. The victim has been stabbed in the chest. It falls to Inspector Rudge to solve this most baffling mystery, in which not only the identity of the killer but the identity of the victim is called into question. The Floating Admiral includes contributions by Canon Victor L. Whitechurch, G. D. H. and Margaret Cole, Henry Wade, Agatha Christie, John Rhode, Milward Kennedy, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ronald A. Knox, Freeman Wills Crofts, Edgar Jepson, Clemence Dane, and Anthony Berkeley. &ldquo;I was . . . hugely entertained by the virtuoso displays of mental gymnastics, which kept me guessing all the way.&rdquo; &mdash;The Guardian </div>

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The Floating Admiral

<div>With &ldquo;a touch of genius,&rdquo; this round-robin mystery follow-up to The Floating Admiral features famous detectives including Lord Peter Wimsey (The Times Literary Supplement). Following the success of The Floating Admiral, in which certain members of the Detection Club&mdash;including Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and G. K. Chesterton&mdash;collaborated on a whodunit, six writers pooled their talents to create another coauthored mystery. This time the premise had an added twist: authors would swap their detective characters, allowing for some extremely entertaining parodies of one another&rsquo;s sleuths. When a ruthless British newspaper tycoon is shot dead in his home, the high-level suspects include the assistant commissioner of Scotland Yard, casting doubt on the impartiality of a formal police investigation. As a solution, the home secretary brings in four brilliant detectives to solve the murder: Mrs. Bradley, Sir John Saumarez, Lord Peter Wimsey, and Roger Sheringham. Featuring a preface by inaugural Detection Club member Agatha Christie, this playful tour de force gathers together half a dozen Golden Age Mystery masters: John Rhode, Helen Simpson, Gladys Mitchell, Anthony Berkeley, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Milward Kennedy. </div>

Ask a Policeman

<div>The renowned British crime writer&rsquo;s classic locked-room Golden Age mystery that introduced amateur sleuth Roger Sheringham. A party at Layton Court, the country house of Victor Stanworth, is disrupted when the host is found shot through the forehead in his own library, a suicide as far as the police are concerned. After all, the gun is found in his hand, a note has been left, and the room is locked from the inside. But one of the guests, author Roger Sheringham, has his doubts. The bullet wound is not positioned where it could have been easily self-inflicted. With a house full of partygoers and servants, suspects abound. It will take Sheringham&rsquo;s sharp wit and fearless investigating to deduce who brought the festivities to a fatal end. The founder of the Detection Club in London, along with Agatha Christie and other writers, Anthony Berkeley wrote numerous novels, sometimes using the pseudonyms Francis Iles and A. Monmouth Platts. The Layton Court Mystery is his first book in the Roger Sheringham Cases, which includes The Poisoned Chocolates Case and The Silk Stocking Murders, among other titles. &ldquo;Certainly, Berkeley&rsquo;s short and fascinating career deserves to be saluted. For fans of the classic English crime novel, his books remain enjoyable to this day. Nobody has ever done ironic ingenuity better than Anthony Berkeley.&rdquo; &mdash;Mystery Scene &ldquo;He was one of the most influential crime novelists of the 1920s and 1930s, but has languished somewhat in obscurity since. A troubled, dark, incredibly innovative writer . . .&rdquo; &mdash;Shedunnit</div>

The Layton Court Mystery

<div>Originally serialized in 1926, this classic English countryside mystery contains a puzzle that even acclaimed crime author Agatha Christie couldn&rsquo;t solve. A secluded country manor in the dead of winter seems like the perfect place to hold a house party. Even better, one of the guests declares that an after-dinner s&eacute;ance would be so much more entertaining than bridge. And it&rsquo;s all fun and games until a young woman goes missing. Assuming the disappearance is someone&rsquo;s idea of a joke, the well-heeled host Lady Susan doesn&rsquo;t want to ruin a good party by calling the police. So it&rsquo;s up to her footman, a down-on-his-luck young army veteran, along with the lovely lady he once hoped to marry, to solve a mystery that soon turns to murder, with the only suspects being the eccentric party guests . . . &ldquo;Detection and crime at its wittiest&mdash;all Berkeley&rsquo;s stories are amusing, intriguing and he is a master of the final twist.&rdquo; &mdash;Agatha Christie &ldquo;Anthony Berkeley is the supreme master not of the &lsquo;twist&rsquo; but of the &lsquo;double-twist.&rsquo;&rdquo; &mdash;The Sunday Times</div>

Anthony Berkeley
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Books By Anthony Berkeley (2 Books)

The Layton Court Mystery

The Wintringham Mystery

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Anthony BerkeleyFollow this author

Books By Anthony Berkeley (2 Books)

The Layton Court Mystery

The Wintringham Mystery

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Anthony Berkeley
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