Anthony Berkeley

Anthony Berkeley's The Poisoned Chocolates Case, published in 1929, is a Golden Age classic.  But reading it this time, I found it dry and formulaic.  

A man is present at his club when another member receives a box of chocolates in the mail.  That member, Sir Eustace Pennefather, doesn't want them, so the first man, Graham Bendix, takes the box home to his wife.  They both eat some of the chocolates and, since she eats more of them than he does, she dies while he becomes ill but recovers.  

Scotland Yard is baffled by the case and has concluded that the crime is the work of a random psychopath. A group called the Crime Circle, led by Roger Sheringham and consisting of himself and five other people meet to consider the case.  As it happens, most of the members know one or more of the people involved in the case.  They take turns, each proposing a different solution on successive nights, each of which appears conclusive, at least until the next solution is proposed.

 At the end, have they arrived at the correct solution?  And if they have, can they prove it?    

Grade:  B

I found Berkeley's Trial and Error so tedious that I did not finish it.  Lawrence Todhunter, who has been told he has a heart defect that will surely kill him, probably within six months to a year, solicits advice from a group of male friends as to the best use that his time can be spent, without telling them that he's dying.  The friends conclude that murdering some person who is causing suffering to other people would be the best solution. The book was written in 1939, on the eve of World War II; several of the members mention assassinating a political figure such as Hitler or Mussolini, but they reject that idea because they conclude that someone even worse would come along to take their places.  

He decides instead to kill an actress who is causing misery to those around her; after she dies, another man is blamed for the crime, and Todhunter is forced to try to prove that he himself killed her.  

Grade:  C.  I just didn't find this one very interesting, particularly in light of the wholesale slaughter unleashed by WWII.