The Poisoned Chocolates Case

The noted amateur detective Roger Sheringham has formed his own private club of “criminologists.” As a challenge for this august group, he proposes that they individually attempt to solve a murder that has baffled Scotland Yard: the death of wealthy businessman Graham Bendix’s wife after he presented her a box of poisoned chocolates. The mystery lies in the fact that Bendix only got those chocolates by chance at his club from Sir Eustace Pennefather, a notorious man about town.

Rather than the six members of the Crimes Circle converging on a single criminal, each one arrives at a completely different solution to the same murder.

Anthony Berkeley’s artifice of forming a club for his amateur detectives in this mystery anticipated in real life the foundation the following year of the famous Detection Club, of which he was a founding member. The Poisoned Chocolates Case is considered one of the classics of the Golden Age of detective fiction.