gadetection

Berkeley, Anthony

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Anthony Berkeley Cox (July 5, 1893 - 1971) was a British crime fiction author, born in Watford, England. He wrote under several names, including gloomy 'psychological' thrillers under the name of Francis Iles. Other pseudonyms he used included Monmouth Platts.

Berkeley was quite prominent amongst crime writers of his time and was associated with others in this field, including Christie, Sayers and Chesterton, in the Detection Club. The mysteries written as 'Anthony Berkeley' are more or less straight detective fiction, featuring one of two detectives: Roger Sheringham, an egotist whom Berkeley deliberately made as unpleasant as he could, and a dithery but much nicer elderly man, Mr. Chitterwick. Berkeley's The Poisoned Chocolates Case is a tour-de-force of Golden Age detection, with no fewer than six separate solutions proposed and argued for before the final conclusion is reached.

One of the books which Cox wrote as Francis Iles, Malice Aforethought (1931), may have contained the precursor of James Thurber's Walter Mitty (1941). Iles's 'Walter Mitty' was a Dr. Bickleigh. Both Mitty and Bickleigh were dominated by strong wives. But whereas Mitty desperately needed looking after (and his fantasies were, simply, denial of this reality), Bickleigh had married his wife for money and status and had to tolerate her dominance until he took steps to dispose of her (hence the book's title).

Mike Grost on Anthony Berkeley

I am not a big fan of Anthony Berkeley. His multiple-solutioned The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929) is more facile than really imaginative. Berkeley's key approaches derive directly from E.C. Bentley. Bentley's Trent's Last Case (1913) has two solutions, and shows its detective failing to solve the mystery, with the true solution being only revealed by chance after the detective offers a false (if ingenious) explanation. Berkeley used this plot pattern repeatedly in his books, with numerous variations: both multiple solutions and failed detectives abound. Berkeley would go on to collaborate directly with Bentley, and Father Ronald Knox, in plotting the last three chapters of Behind The Screen (1930), a Detection Club round robin.

Berkeley had a real gift for parody. His contribution to Ask a Policeman (1933), another Detection Club collaboration, is a wicked spoof of Dorothy L. Sayers and Lord Peter Wimsey. "The Policeman Only Taps Once" (1936) is a hilarious takeoff on James M. Cain.