From the Bookshelf of Reading the Detectives…

The Poisoned Chocolates Case

Anthony Berkeley,

Martin Edwards (Foreword)

Start date: January 1, 2021

Finish date: January 31, 2021

Discussion: Group reads

Why we're reading this: Winner of the poll for our January group read.
[close] Winner of the poll for our January group read.

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

Showing 2 of 328 topics — 11,869 comments total

Group reads

* VOTE NOW for November 2025 group read!
By Judy · 19 posts · 21 views

last updated 38 minutes ago

* Sept 25: Lonesome Road (#3 Miss Silver Mysteries) by Patricia Wentworth
By Susan · 13 posts · 11 views

last updated Sep 03, 2025 12:03PM

showing 1 of 1 topics view all »

What Members Thought

Jan 16, 2021 Brenda rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I thought this was a fun mystery. I liked the set up of the club and each member giving their solution to the crime. I was quite surprised at the ending and hadn’t expected that outcome.

7 likes · Like · see review

Dec 27, 2020 Susan in NC rated it liked it · review of another edition

3.5 stars - interesting, lots of humorous dialogue, but a lot of telling, not showing. I could only get hold of this in audiobook form, which was probably not the best way to read such a “chatty” mystery.

I can see why this is considered a classic academic mystery - a crime circle club, interested in “criminological matters”, dives into an unsolved poisoning case that has stumped Scotland Yard. This is subtitled as the fifth Roger Sheringham case - he was Berkeley’s mystery writer/amateur detecti ...more

4 likes · Like · see review

Mar 27, 2011 Jan C rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, 2013

My first Roger Sheringwood story. It was a gathering of a crime club working to decipher a cold case. Scotland Yard is apparently stymied. I think they all take to work up their own conclusions and present them, one per night. It seems like each debunks the previous one, and all preceding ones, too. Finally, a Casper Milquetoast-type is the last person. And they are all certain he knows nothing. He knows plenty... he has been taking notes ... he has a chart.

I didn't get it.

(view spoiler) ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Aug 29, 2011 Abbey rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: vintage, reviewed, myst-cosies, myst-set-andor-auth-uk, myst-fems-project-maybe

BOTTOM LINE: Anthony Berkeley's twisty tale of Roger Sheringham and his very own detection club puzzle - a classic, and deservedly so.

Setting: A Club of the best sort, wherein several VIP fans of detection and puzzles meet weekly to solve mysteries proposed by members or invited guests.

Main Characters: Six members of the club, including founder Roger Sheringham, detective deluxe, in the Wimsey mode, all referential and witty, but also truly a bit of an ass at times. A renowned Lady Novelist (Mo BOTTOM LINE: Anthony Berkeley's twisty tale of Roger Sheringham and his very own detection club puzzle - a classic, and deservedly so.

Setting: A Club of the best sort, wherein several VIP fans of detection and puzzles meet weekly to solve mysteries proposed by members or invited guests.

Main Characters: Six members of the club, including founder Roger Sheringham, detective deluxe, in the Wimsey mode, all referential and witty, but also truly a bit of an ass at times. A renowned Lady Novelist (Modern Division), a full of himself popular Mystery Writer, a well-known Lady Playwright, an extremely expensive and quite famous Lawyer, and an extraordinary little man who, somehow, passed all the tests for entrance but nobody can quite remember just how. And for garnish, a Detective Inspector as guest, asking for assistance in what seems an insoluble case.

A wealthy gentleman happens into his club at the moment another member receives a large, complimentary box of chocolates to sample. On hearing that they will simply be tossed aside otherwise, he accepts them as a gift, explaining that he had made a bet with his wife and lost, and had forgotten that tonight he must pay up, and these will do very well.... The chocolates are, indeed, as per the title, poisoned, and his dear little wife bites the dust. Thus is set in motion one of the most famous classic puzzle plots of the 1920s, a period renowned for such things.

And this is a very plush, and posh, variant on that style, with a select number of puzzle solvers, a seemingly unsolvable crime (or was it an accident?), and six gloriously twisted, all quite possible, solutions provided by the club members. Each gathers clues and presents a report over six days, and each one is quite different from the previous one. The reader gets drawn further and further into the belief that each is the correct solution, as all are plausible and well-thought out. Berkeley is quite diabolical in this process, pulling you further and further along, all the while making you understand the people involved in the club almost as much as the people in the case.

Of course almost from the first the reader knows that, in the classic manner, the inoffensive little man saves the day, ultimately, but we get to go on several wild rides before then, all glossed over with gloriously snappy patter and a few not inconsiderable digs at Berkeley’s friends and compatriots in the real Detection Club, which he helped found a few years earlier. It takes a while to “get going”, but this is, overall, a superb, deceptively twisted bon mot of a tale, deservedly on many “best of” lists, and after nearly a century, still a rather delicious treat.
...more

Like · see review

Oct 08, 2018 Shabbeer Hassan rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: whodunit, 2018

A classic tale of misdirection based whodunit, with a unique plot structure.

My Rating - 3.5/5

Like · see review

Mar 01, 2017 Yorky Caz rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: blcc

Loved it! Such an unusual angle. The police unable to solve a murder turn to a bunch of amateurs members of the Crimes Club. They each put forward their theory for debate. sooooo good

Like · see review