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Caroline: Welcome to Shedunnit. I’m Caroline Crampton.
And welcome back to Green Penguin Book Club, a series within Shedunnit that documents my journey of reading and discussing every crime or green title from the main Penguin series, in order. Our book today is The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley, which was first published in 1929. It was then added to the Penguin series in September of 1936, as Penguin number 58. It was the first of Berkeley’s books to become a Penguin, but certainly not the last — ten more of his novels would go on to join the series, his run ending with Murder in the Basement as Penguin 591 in August 1947.
Anthony Berkeley was one of several pseudonyms used by Anthony Berkeley Cox, a journalist turned crime writer who was a dominant figure in interwar detective fiction. Shortly after The Poisoned Chocolates Case was published he co-founded the Detection Club, and although he ceased to publish new crime writing after the start of the Second World War, he remained a prominent figure in the genre until his death in 1971 via his reviews and his criticism. He is especially notable, in my view, for his relentless innovation. Each of his detective novels pushes the form and the genre in a new direction, with Berkeley trying out some aspect that had not been attempted before, and as you will hear, The Poisoned Chocolates Case is no different. Although the book did have a period where it was not widely available, thankfully it was republished in a new edition by the British Library Crime Classics series in 2016, and is thus quite easy to track down. And if you would like to keep on top of what books are coming up next for the Green Penguin Book Club series, I’ve linked to a list of the whole Penguin series in the description so you get reading accordingly.
Joining me today to discuss this book is Martin Edwards, who I’m sure many of you listening will already know. As well as being a repeat Shedunnit guest, Martin is a crime writer himself — his most recent book in the golden age set Rachel Savernake series is Hemlock Bay, just out now — and an expert on the golden age of detective fiction. And if he needed any further qualification to be here today, he’s also the current president of the Detection Club that Anthony Berkeley co-founded in 1930, and the editor of that new British Library Crime Classics edition of The Poisoned Chocolates Case that I mentioned. With all this expertise on hand, I can’t wait to see what we make of this book as we revisit it together.
Before we get into it, though, I’ll give my usual spoiler warning here. Until you hear me say that we are “entering the spoiler zone”, you can safely listen without hearing major plot details. The timestamp for that point will also be in the episode description. After that, you can expect to hear major spoilers, up to and including the full solution to the mystery. For maximum enjoyment of Green Penguin Book Club episodes, I recommend that you read the book ahead of listening. And at the end of every episode, I ask my guest to award the book a rating, so stay tuned to the end to hear how many green penguins out of five Martin gives this one.
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Do you remember your first encounter with The Poisoned Chocolates Case?
Martin: Yes, I do. It was really as a result of reading Julian Symons’ Bloody Murder. And he enthused about it. And he didn’t enthuse about that many golden age detective fiction masterpieces. So that intrigued me and I managed to find a copy eventually. It was out of print in Britain at the time, but I eventually found a copy on holiday abroad, I think in Amsterdam or something like that, in a scruffy little secondhand bookshop, this tatty copy of The Poisoned Chocolates Case.
So that was my first introduction to it. And I read it and loved it and I’ve read it plenty of times since then.
Caroline: What is it do you think that first intrigued you or got you interested in that book particularly, you having read so many of this kind of novel?
Martin: One story I had read at a tender age was the short story “The Avenging Chance”, which appears to have been written before, although it seems to have been published subsequently. Berkeley’s publishing history being quite complicated in some ways. And I loved the short story. So I was aware of the elements and I knew that the novel was connected with the short story. And I liked the idea of the twist is something I’ve always loved anyway. And the idea of multiple twists and a different twist in the novel, from that in the short story really appealed to me.
I began by buying into the idea of the multiple solutions, which of course is a big selling point of the book initially.
Caroline: And for those who don’t know, what is the connection between “The Avenging Chance” and The Poisoned Chocolates Case?
Martin: Well, “The Avenging Chance” is one of the few whodunnit short stories from the golden age that is really very successful.
Even Christie struggled to write whodunnits in the short form. Dorothy L. Sayers really struggled with it because it’s very difficult because you don’t have the space to plant all the clues, do the misdirection, have all the red herrings and so on. But “The Avenging Chance” does pull it off, I think, very successfully.
And you have the amateur detective, Roger Sheringham, solving the mystery and coming up with a really ingenious solution to a clever mystery. Now, in The Poisoned Chocolates Case, Berkeley takes the concept several steps further because the Crimes Circle debates the mystery and people start coming up with their own versions of whodunnit and why, and then eventually Sheringham comes up and he has a solution similar to that in the short story, seems very plausible, must be right, except that it isn’t because it’s then debunked.
And that’s the clever thing. So he takes the idea that he had in the short story and he does something fresh with it, in an intricate and appealing way. The book is subtitled “an academic detective story”. And it is a cerebral piece of work but it’s done with a lightness of touch that I find endlessly engaging.
Caroline: The structure of the book is, I think, still unusual. It stands out because although the characters relate their exploits outside of the room, it pretty much all takes place in this one room on successive nights. How difficult do you think is that to make interesting? People sitting around a table talking.
Martin: I think it’s incredibly difficult to make interesting. It’s not easy in a short story. It’s very difficult in a novel. And it’s interesting that the short story has been televised back in the sixties in the Detective Anthology series, with John Carson, I think, playing Sheringham and playing him pretty well I think, good actor.
But the nature of the armchair detection in the novel to try to make that engaging is a big ask. And Berkeley was very determined to set himself very difficult challenges with the novels. What appeals to me, amongst other things about the novel, is that he finds ways to overcome this static element in the storyline.
And one of the ways, of course, is by referring to true crimes. The Christiana Edmunds case and others that appear to parallel some of the solutions and that adds a layer of interest to the story, but there’s also the dynamics between the characters. Alice Dammers in particular the way that’s done, the reference to the detective work that they undertake in between meetings, that sort of thing.
It’s not — I’ll be the first to admit it’s not to everybody’s taste. I’ve read reviews by people whose judgement I respect who are slightly uncertain about it. But I think if you buy into the premise, it’s done really as well as it could be.
Caroline: So it was first published in 1929. Where do we find Berkeley in his career as a detective writer at that point?
Martin: Well, his first novel had been published I think just four years earlier. So in many ways certainly by the standards of today, he was just starting out, but he was nothing Berkeley, if not confident in his own abilities at least on a superficial level. So he was already very committed to trying to do different things.
He’d done that pretty much all of his early novels. And he was maturing as a plot smith, but he was also aware of the importance of character differentiation. And so we have in The Poisoned Chocolates Case, the two characters who are really different sides of Berkeley’s own character. You have Sheringham, who’s the outrageous, bumptious, difficult, clever, but difficult guy.
And then you have meek, insecure, Mr Ambrose Chitterwick who’s the sort of diffident introverted. side of Berkeley. Berkeley obviously liked writing about Chitterwick because Chitterwick appears in two other novels in a different way. And he plays a crucial part in The Poisoned Chocolates Case and I think Berkeley certainly identified with aspects in Chitterwick’s personality, although he was a tricky individual I think in real life, he also had his vulnerable side and certainly a lot of insecurities.
Caroline: And then this is his first novel to become a Green Penguin the following decade. Does that choice, do you think, reflect the popularity of the book compared to his other work?
Martin: I think it probably does. It was a book that was hugely successful. It was greatly admired by Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie, for instance. Extremely well reviewed. And of course it came out at a time when the golden age ingenuity was at its peak. Berkeley would go on in the guise of Francis Iles to explore psychology in greater depth than he did in the Berkeley books. But this book was a big hit. And so to me, it’s not particularly surprising that Penguin were keen to select it.
Caroline: Presumably it exposed it to a much greater readership again in turn, which is interesting to think about people coming upon it in that context on its own. So at this point I will say to listeners, we’re going to enter the spoiler zone. So if you don’t want to know any more about what happens in this book, please stop listening until you do.
So as you’ve already said, there are parallels in this book to various real life cases, especially that of Christiana Edmunds with the poisoned chocolates themselves.
What I found so extraordinary when I read this book for the first time is that I believe every single solution as I’m reading them. I think well, this must be the one. And I think that five times until we get to the end. That to me seems like the pinnacle of the detective writer’s craft is to take one set of facts and twist them in multiple directions. You are a writer of detective fiction yourself, as well as a critic and an expert on it. Have you ever thought about trying something like this yourself in a novel?
Martin: Oh, absolutely. And, In some ways I’ve tried my hand at it. So in my latest book, Hemlock Bay you come to an apparent solution, but it’s not the full story. And so I play around with the idea of multiple solutions in different ways in books like that, particularly in the Rachel Savernake series, to a limited extent in the first series about Harry Devlin as well.
But to do it on the scale that Berkeley did it is something quite other really. Even Ellery Queen, who was very adept at multiple solutions, never wrote anything quite like The Poisoned Chocolates Case but again the two cousins who wrote as Ellery Queen were big fans of the book because they understood its brilliance and they didn’t try to replicate it directly, but they were certainly strongly influenced by it..
Caroline: And the group that gathers in the room and the different individuals who then each present their solutions, they’re all part of this Crimes Circle Roger Sheringham has put together. What relationship, if any, does this have with the Detection Club that Berkeley was about to or already in the process of putting together?
I think that there is a relationship, of course, one’s dependent on surmise, and of course there are multiple interpretations as Berkeley points out in the novel, but it’s well established that in 1928, he started inviting fellow crime writers to dinner at his house in Watford and these dinners proved to be successful, popular, he was a very good host. And he brought what he considered to be the cream of crime writing at the time. So although we don’t have records of who came when, it’s pretty clear that Christie, Sayers, Ronald Knox and others were amongst the early guests. John Rhode, another one.
Martin: And these were in the days when writers, crime writers. really didn’t know each other, by and large. So it was a very successful piece of social interaction. And I think that Berkeley, who had such a fertile mind and a restless imagination, started wondering how he could apply this in fiction.
And this is where the idea of the Crimes Circle came. There was already the organization that’s now known as Our Society which discusses true crime, which had its 125th anniversary last year. So that already existed, but I think that Berkeley saw the opening, the possibility of creating something for the leading detective fiction writers.
Of course, he put himself in that group. I think he was right to do so. He had no compunction about it characteristically. There’s also a passing reference in one of the Ronald Knox books, I think it’s The Footsteps at the Lock, suggesting that it was something that was being talked about in 1929 amongst the people who met at Berkeley’s house and certainly by January 1930 he was all set to go. Sayers was particularly enthusiastic, particularly energetic some of the others were very keen to form the club. And so it set off from there. And so you see in The Poisoned Chocolates Case the embryo of an idea for a social gathering that’s actually took flight in a rather wonderful way.
Caroline: And Roger Sheringham’s gathering come together in this book specifically to try and solve a real life mystery with the cooperation of Scotland Yard. As far as I know, Detection Club never pursued something quite like that. But yes, you can absolutely see the sort of meeting of minds of fellow interested parties all gathered together. You can see how pleasant it would be, writing as a solitary occupation, to feel like you have colleagues is a great thing. And then amongst the different characters, we have six presenters at the meeting over successive nights, and they all bring their own characters and their own approaches to the problem of who poisoned the chocolates, who was the intended victim, was it the person the chocolates were sent to? Was it the person who actually consumed the chocolates? Was it someone else? They’re very well drawn portraits, these characters, because they spend so much time talking about the case, we don’t see them in their lives, living their lives or anything like like you might normally in a book. Was Berkeley drawing inspiration from real life with any of those people, do you think? Or did they truly spring from his mind?
Martin: I think that Berkeley was very keen, sometimes dangerously keen on fictionalizing people in his own life. Some of the real life models, it’s easy to figure out who they are. Some it isn’t. Alice Dammers possibly has a touch of E. M. Delafield that again, there are differences but I think that there are some connections.
Ambrose Chitterwick, as I’ve suggested, like Sheringham, that these form the Jekyll and Hyde of Berkeley’s own personality. Morton Harrogate Bradley, difficult to say, is there a touch of Milward Kennedy? Is there a touch of John Rhode, who’s a very different guy from Kennedy?
I think that Berkeley’s mixing up the elements. And of course, the fact is that once you’re writing a novel, if you’re serious about the craft of writing, you may take inspiration from real life but the imaginative process takes you in fresh direction. So the real life inspiration becomes somewhat different on the page, sometimes very different, sometimes completely unrecognizable.
And that’s all part of the pleasure of that kind of writing. Sometimes of course it’s more fun, more appealing to not have a real life model. And that’s the approach that many writers, including generally myself, adopt. But Berkeley was very much someone who liked to take something from real life and then play games with it.
Caroline: I think about that particularly with the barrister who goes first and who is so supremely self-confident that he alone can possibly have come up with the solution. And I love how even structurally, Berkeley is undermining him by putting him first. So you, as the person holding the book, know that he cannot possibly be right because you’re still holding two thirds of the book in the other hand.
Martin: That’s right. And you can imagine that he was drawn from people that Berkeley had come across. And I think that his interest in the law and the criminal law and famous trials no doubt led him to attend various criminal trials. So I think he’d seen people in action who had obviously been aware of Marshall Hall, the great defender of the era. And so there’s probably quite a bit of inspiration taken from real life in the portrait of the lawyer, but at the same time I think that there will also have been quite a dash of invention to make him a suitable target for mockery.
Caroline: Yes, I think the precision with which he writes the rhetoric of that lawyer always sticks in my mind as being such a clever bit of pastiche. And just for little turns of phrase, like I think he says at one point, he’s a defense barrister because rhetorical flourishes are not welcome in the prosecution.
Just little things like that, I think are such clever little details that really put the character in the place without being so crass as to break a fourth wall or anything like that. You do feel like Berkeley is talking directly to you in that moment. I find it a great pleasure to read that sort of thing. As we go through the different solutions, do you have a favorite one? Is there one in particular that you like?
Martin: I do think that Chitterwick’s is very pleasing and I can absolutely see why Berkeley wanted to major on that. I think there are artistic reasons for it. It just works so well, I think. It develops the book, develops our understanding of the characters in an appealing way. So I think that’s really my favorite in the book.
Caroline: I’m quite partial to the one that comes immediately before him, the Dammers solution, but only with the hindsight of knowing what we know when we come to the very end of the book that spoiler, she is in fact the culprit. Because I think it’s such a yarn, she’s spinning such a tale, and I think that’s definitely one where I’ve enjoyed it upon rereading.
People sometimes say to me, why on earth do you reread detective novels? Because you know what and that’s a really good example of why, I think.
Martin: It really is, and I think that it’s particularly true, and I do agree with you about rereading, but it’s particularly true of this book. I think that you re read a book, a detective novel with a clever solution. You reread it because it’s entertaining, you enjoy the characters, the setting or whatever. But also second time around, you can get another level of pleasure from seeing how the author pulls the wool over the reader’s eyes.
And certainly to me as a novelist that’s very interesting, instructive, and I take note of how they do it and the extent to which they get away with it. And this particular book, because it is so Intricate and it’s so ingenious, if you’re interested in story structure, as I am very much then it’s enormously rewarding to see just how he does it and how he fits these ingredients.
We’ve already mentioned the rather static setting and see how he gets over the obstacles that he’s put in his own way and then exploits them in a way that’s really cunning and fun. I don’t know how many times I’ve reread the book now, but it’s quite a number. And each time I’ve pulled out of it something a little bit different, and I do think that’s a tribute to any book, and it’s certainly a tribute to a highly plotted detective story such as this.
Caroline: I would completely agree. And I think of something, a clue, for instance, like that, of the note paper, which at the very beginning in the police summing up of the case, they say we’ve only got three physical clues. We’ve got the note paper, the chocolates themselves, and then the paper that they came wrapped, this note paper from the manufacturer of the chocolates. And then this note paper travels through each potential solution and is used in a different way by each detective to explain something different. And it’s such a clever motif. It’s one clue, it’s one piece of paper, but it ends up meaning so many different things depending on who’s in the driving seat. I think that’s supreme quality craft.
Martin: Yes, absolutely. He’s despite the fact, as we said, he’s only been publishing crime fiction for a pretty short period of time, less than five years, not long at all. He’s already mastered a lot of the elements. It’s quite remarkable, really.
Caroline: Yes, I do think it can be good to remember sometimes where these writers were in their lives at the time that they published books because to us they, to me certainly, I think of them as being from a very long time ago and being very great at what they do. But people didn’t pop out writing a first book like that. They were young people trying something, learning as they go. And yes, I’m in awe to think that someone, who’d only just started writing novels within the last five years wrote something like this.
Martin: Absolutely. And Christie was in her thirties she was born in 1890. So she was just coming up to 40 at the time the club was actually formed, a bit younger when she was going to the dinners. Sayers, slightly younger, Berkeley too. John Dickson Carr was 29 when he was invited to join the club. A few years later, Edmund Crispin was even younger than that, in his early twenties.
So it was very different from the literary scene today. You have these young people who were diving into detective fiction and writing very ingenious and sophisticated stories that astonishingly have in many cases, stood the test of time.
Caroline: Given the, we absolutely agree on the supremely high quality of this book, do you have any thoughts on why it had a period where it was out of print and unobtainable?
Martin: I think that The Poisoned Chocolates Case simply suffered from the problem that 98%, 99% of detective fiction of the period suffered from, which was that there was a lack of publisher interest. The Poisoned Chocolates Case was in fact reprinted quite a few times in its lifetime. Long after the Penguin edition there was in particular a very good American edition with notes and added material. That was in the seventies, late seventies. But it was absolutely commonplace for books, once they’re out of print, to disappear from sight very often forever because in the days before digital publishing, it was expensive to produce them. And once a book had gone, it had gone.
And this is why Christie, in Cards on the Table, casually gives away four solutions. Because you think I’m writing disposable fiction, it’ll all disappear and nobody cares. And I’ll give it all away. It doesn’t matter. She probably didn’t think about it. Probably just something that she wrote without a second thought, the editor didn’t give it a second thought, but of course those books have all lasted. Mega spoiler alert, really. But that was the reality that nearly all these books did disappear. Only a very limited number survived in any significant form for, oh, more than half a century. And The Poisoned Chocolates Case wasn’t unusual in that respect.
In some ways, it was unusual. It had done so well because of its initial success and then the Penguin edition and so on, and the admiration that other people had expressed for it. But of course the fact that Berkeley gave up crime writing after 1939. He never wrote another detective novel.
He lived for another 30 years plus, but never published another detective novel. So that too, you’re off the scene, in effect, he continued to review under the name of Francis Iles, but Anthony Berkeley effectively disappeared. So there’s no commercial imperative to promote the older books. And that’s part of the explanation, I think.
Caroline: You mentioned that American edition from the late 70s. Am I right in thinking that’s the one that Christianna Brand wrote her new ending for? And then when the British Library Crime Classics series brought The Poisoned Chocolates Case on, you wrote another ending for it. Tell us a bit about how you went about that and why you wanted to do wanted to do it.
Martin: Yeah, supreme chutzpah. Yes I read the American edition, I’d read Christianna Brand’s solution. I thought it was a wonderful thing to come up with a fresh solution to the book that, you would have thought all the solutions would have been tried. I thought it was a brave thing that she did.
She was a very ingenious writer. I think that if we nitpick criticisms can be made of her solution but I thought it was really interesting. So I, first of all, encouraged the British Library to reprint the book and then persuaded Rob Davis, who was the chap in charge of publications at the time, and he was really responsible for the initial success of the series.
Once I persuaded him to bring the book back, the rights had been secured. I suggested to him including the Christianna Brand coda to the story. And then through a series of conversations, the idea was put to me, evolved that I might write another solution which was a challenge, which was a mixture of things.
It was very exciting, very flattering, and very terrifying because of course, the thought of doing it badly was not what you want to do. And of course, had I tried to do it and written something that I was just unhappy with, it would never have seen light of day because, you don’t want to debase a terrific detective story with something rubbishy that you’ve written.
That’s not good for anybody. So I wanted to take up the challenge. I had actually, many years earlier, finished somebody else’s book. The Scottish writer, Bill Knox, had written a book and died in the course of writing it. And I’d written the finale to the book, quite a substantial chunk of it.
And that book, The Lazarus Widow, was actually pretty successful. And I think artistically it worked, the family were very happy and I’m still in touch with them, family members of Bill’s. And they’ve always been very happy about that. So I had a bit of a track record in finishing other people’s work.
But this was very different because this was clearly classic detective fiction and a very major novel in that genre. So I went about it by rereading the book carefully, and I knew that what I needed was that sort of magic idea. And I realized that if I didn’t have that idea that really sang to me, then it wasn’t going to be something that was even worth trying to write.
Luckily as I was reading the text in a very minute way something occurred to me and I suddenly had the idea of something fresh that is planted in the book in a sense, maybe subconsciously by Berkeley that I could take in a new direction.
And once I had that idea, that was the key. I was well versed in Berkeley’s style because I do like his writing. I’ve read his books many times. And so I felt I could get into the style. It was important, pay due tribute to the style of writing. But I also felt I had a plot idea that was worthy of the Great Man.
So I actually wrote that ending, 3000 and some words. I wrote it very quickly in a very few days, and it didn’t take much editing, and I don’t think the British Library edited it at all. I was happy with it. It was just one of those lucky, happy, fortuitous things when you get the idea at the right time and it goes just as you hope.
Of course it’s one thing for you to think it’s gone well. You do wonder how people will react to it. But it was one of those situations where I did feel a certain degree of confidence. I hoped it wasn’t hubris that it was good enough.
And although it is very difficult to judge your own work, you do have a sense when you’ve written a lot of fiction as to what’s okay and what’s better than okay. And I felt that this was was worth doing. British Library were very enthusiastic about it and the reaction was fantastic.
So whew, I got away with it.
Caroline: More than got away with it, think it’s very good. I also like how it contributes to the living quality of the novel, in a way, that Christianna Brand, and then you, make us feel like the story isn’t ever over, that, maybe in two or three decades time someone else will write another one and this game continues. It’s rare even among classic detective fiction that loves to play games that you’ve got one that’s still being played or feels like it is. Yeah, I think it’s a great innovation to have.
So I think now we come towards the end of our discussion and a couple of things just to wrap up.
The first is, do you think this book plays fair by the reader?
Martin: Yes, I do in a certain way. New information does come to light as the inquiries are undertaken by the various wannabe detectives. But I think that if one doesn’t take too pernickety a view of fair play, I think it is essentially a fair play novel, but I think that of course what Berkeley was really trying to do was to show that as Bentley did years earlier with Trent’s Last Case, that the apparently omniscient detective doesn’t always get it right. And that’s the greatest strength of the book, I think.
Caroline: Yes, because we should say actually that obviously Roger Sheringham does present his solution. He’s one of the members of the Crimes Circle, and then he is superseded by, I think two more after that in the original.
Martin: That’s right. And that’s wonderful, I think.
Caroline: I think so. And it already shows some playfulness around the idea of the conventions of the genre and so on, doesn’t it? That the amateur detective is amateur in more ways than one sometimes.
Martin: It’s clever but it’s also ironic and it’s also quite thoughtful, I think, in telling us not to jump to assumptions too readily.
Caroline: And then lastly. Martin, how many Green Penguins out of five would you give The Poisoned Chocolates Case?
Martin: It’s got to be a resounding five.
Caroline: I think that’s the first five we’ve had so far in the series and very well deserved. Martin Edwards, thank you very much for joining me for Green Penguin Book Club.
Martin: Thanks Caroline.
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I hope you enjoyed our discussion of The Poisoned Chocolates Case — I feel I should apologise in advance for any future green penguin episodes, because I doubt I’m going to be able to secure a guest so perfectly matched with a book that they have actually written a published update to it ever again.
This is now the postbag section, where I catch you up on the correspondence I’ve received since our last Green Penguin Book Club episode. If you heard our last episode, in which Dolores Gordon Smith and I discussed Penguin 34, Mr Fortune, Please by H.C. Bailey, you will know that I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this collection of six longer short stories. I was interested to hear from listener Sarah, therefore, who had a rather different experience. “HC Bailey’s writing style didn’t agree with me and I found the stories boring, honestly,” she wrote in to say, continuing: “I didn’t find them very believable, and they felt thin and underwritten, despite being quite long.” Her rating was 2 Green Penguins out of 5, rather lower than the 4 that Dolores and I gave. Although I didn’t have this experience myself, I can absolutely see how H.C. Bailey’s prose is a bit of an acquired taste, so it makes sense to me that it wouldn’t be for everyone. I was also interested to hear from Elizabeth, who found the book to be available as an audiobook and enjoyed it in that format. Several other listeners also got in touch to recommend this format. She even went on to listen to some other Mr Fortune short story collections, although did say that she was unpleasantly surprised by some of the “of its time language” included, such as casual use of the N word and deeply colonialist attitudes.
And then jumping one episode back in the series, Andrew got in touch about The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett, which I read with Olly back in June. Andrew wanted to add a vote of confidence for the 1934 film adaptation starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, which he says makes for a spectacular companion to the book. I agree — I watched this film for the first time with members of the Shedunnit Book Club, and it is a great romp, and indeed less gritty than the book itself. Andrew does warn that the film sequels, which were not based on Hammett’s original book, do go downhill in terms of quality, but are still worth a watch if you happen to catch them airing on a classic film channel one afternoon.
Thanks very much to everyone who got in touch — please do email caroline@shedunnitshow.com if you have a comment you’d like to submit for inclusion in a future episode. The next book we cover for Green Penguin Book Club will be The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie, which is Penguin Number 61. I’m doing these episodes roughly every eight weeks, so listen out for that episode at the end of November.
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This episode of Shedunnit was produced and hosted by me, Caroline Crampton. My guest was Martin Edwards. You can find out more about him and his books, including his latest novel Hemlock Bay at his website, martinedwardsbooks.com.
You can find a full list of the books we mentioned in this episode at shedunnitshow.com/thepoisonedchocolatescase. I publish transcripts of every episode including this one; find them all at shedunnitshow.com/transcripts.
Shedunnit is edited by Euan McAleece. Production assistance from Leandra Griffith. Member support for the Shedunnit Book Club from CC McLoughlin.
Thanks for listening.
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This ad free episode of Shedunnit was produced and hosted by me, Caroline Crampton. My guest was Martin Edwards. You can find out more about him and his books, including his latest novel Hemlock Bay at his website, martinedwardsbooks.com.
You can find a full list of books mentioned in this episode at shedunnitbookclub.com/thepoisonedchocolatescaseadfree. A very warm welcome to the new Book Club members who has joined since the last new episode: Melanie, Caroline, Nikki, Stephanie, Niki, Janet, Mia and Miriam. I’m very grateful to have your support, and I hope you enjoy belonging to the club.
Shedunnit is written and produced by me, Caroline Crampton, and edited by Euan McAleece. Production assistance from Leandra Griffith. Member support for the Shedunnit Book Club from CC McLoughlin.
Thanks for listening.
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This episode of Shedunnit was written, narrated and produced by me, Caroline Crampton.
You can find out more about the podcast and everything it covers at shedunnitshow.com, where there are also transcripts of every episode.
Shedunnit is edited by Euan McAleece. Production assistance from Leandra Griffith. Member support for the Shedunnit Book Club from CC McLoughlin.
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