Jumping Jenny
-
-
3.3 • 3 Ratings
-
-
- $14.99
Publisher Description
"A witty and tricky plot and a genuinely shocking conclusion."—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
A mystery dinner theater party thrown by local author with a taste “for rather gruesome humor” requires guests come dressed as infamous killers—Jack the Ripper, Dr. Crippen, and the like. Whatever could go wrong?
Know-it-all amateur criminologist Roger Sheringham settles in for an evening of beer, small talk, and analyzing his companions. Ena Stratton, the host's sister-in-law, catches his attention. Her erratic mood swings and loud, gossipy talk is winning her more than a few enemies amongst the guests. When she's found dead, it's clear that one of the partygoers helped her to an early grave.
Noticing a key detail that could implicate a friend in the crime, Sheringham decides to meddle with the scene and unwittingly makes himself a suspect.
Tightly paced and cleverly defying the conventions of the classic detective story, Anthony Berkeley's dark sense of humor and taste for the macabre drive this 1933 classic.
This edition includes an introduction by CWA Diamond Dagger and Edgar ® Award-winning author Martin Edwards.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in post-WWI England, this outstanding 1933 mystery from Berkeley (1893–1971) opens at "a murderer-and-victim party" outside London attended by amateur sleuth Roger Sheringham. The respectable guests are garbed as prominent killers, including Dr. Crippen and Jack the Ripper. The host, Ronald Stratton, who writes detective stories "full of a rather gruesome humour," has even decorated his flat roof with a gallows, complete with three hanging dummies. The festivities turn grim after a guest finds a woman's corpse in place of one of the stuffed figures. Sheringham rules out suicide, since there was nothing nearby for the woman to have stood on. For a surprising reason, however, he alters the crime scene by moving a chair near the body to mislead the police into concluding that she took her own life. In doing so, Sheringham places himself in legal jeopardy as he tries to both identify the killer and conceal his own complicity in altering the crime scene. Berkely adroitly plays on readers' expectations of genre conventions with a witty and tricky plot and a genuinely shocking conclusion. The British Library Crime Classics series does golden age fans a great service with this reissue.
