Books by Anthony Berkeley

Murder in the Basement (British Library Crime Classics)

by Anthony Berkeley

"[Anthony Berkeley's] tale of petty rivalries, affairs, and revenge plots is so deliciously entertaining. [Murder in the Basement is] a pioneering example of the "whowasdunin" that, like that corpse in the basement, richly deserves exhumation."― Kirkus Reviews
When two newlyweds discover that a corpse has been buried in the basement of their new home, a grueling case begins to trace the identity of the victim. With all avenues of investigation approaching exhaustion, a tenuous piece of evidence offers a chance for Chief Inspector Moresby and leads him to the amateur sleuth Roger Sheringham, who has recently been providing cover work in a school south of London.
Desperate for evidence of any kind in the basement case, Moresby begins to sift through the manuscript of a satirical novel Sheringham has been writing about his colleagues at the school, convinced that amongst the colorful cast of teachers hides the victim―and perhaps their murderer.
A novel pairing dark humor and intelligent detection work, this 1932 mystery is an example of a celebrated Golden Age author's most inventive work. This edition includes an introduction by CWA Diamond Dagger Award–winning author Martin Edwards.

Before the Fact

by Anthony Berkeley, Francis Iles

Unsettling and gripping, this innovative classic first published in 1932 was the basis for Alfred Hitchcock's film Suspicion, and remains an arresting and unique work of literary artistry. Anthony Berkeley Cox, writing as Francis Iles, flips the traditional mystery model of the crime genre to delve into the psychology, fears, and motives of a suspecting victim. This edition includes an introduction by CWA Diamond Dagger and Edgar® Award-winning author Martin Edwards.

"Written with refrigerated violence. Disturbing, exciting." --The Listener

"Magnificent--a masterpiece of cruelty and wit." --Christopher Morley

"One of the finest studies of murder ever written." --John C. Farrar

"Some women give birth to murderers, some go to bed with them, and some marry them. Lina Aysgarth had lived with her husband for nearly eight years before she realized that she was married to a murderer."

With these opening words, Before the Fact ushers the reader into the dark and experimental world of Francis Iles's crime fiction.

Written in the wake of his ground-breaking murderer's-perspective novel Malice Aforethought, Before the Fact sees the author applying his signature flair for thrilling suspense and human insight. The twisting narrative is told from the viewpoint of a wife as she navigates a life with her disquieting yet charismatic husband--and the mounting peril of his murderous intentions.

Bodies from the Library 3

by Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L. Sayers, Anthony Berkeley, Nicholas Blake

This anthology of rare stories of crime and suspense brings together 18 tales from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction for the first time in book form, including uncollected stories by Ngaio Marsh and John Dickson Carr.

The Golden Age of detective fiction had begun inauspiciously with the publication of E.C. Bentley's schismatic Trent's Last Case in 1913, but it hit its stride in 1920 when both Agatha Christie and Freeman Wills Crofts - latterly crowned queen and king of the genre - had crime novels published for the first time. They ushered in two decades of exemplary mystery writing, the era of the whodunit, the impossible crime and the locked-room mystery, with stories that have thrilled and baffled generations of readers.

This new volume in the Bodies from the Library series features the work of 18 prolific authors who, like Christie and Crofts, saw their popularity soar during the Golden Age. Aside from novels, they all wrote short fiction - stories, serials and plays - and although most of them have been collected in books over the last 100 years, here are the ones that got away...

In this book you will encounter classic series detectives including Colonel Gore, Roger Sheringham, Hildegarde Withers and Henri Bencolin; Hercule Poirot solves 'The Incident of the Dog's Ball'; Roderick Alleyn returns to New Zealand in a recently discovered television drama by Ngaio Marsh; and Dorothy L. Sayers' chilling 'The House of the Poplars' is published for the first time.

With a full-length novella by John Dickson Carr and an unpublished radio script by Cyril Hare, this diverse collection concludes with some early 'flash fiction' commissioned by Collins' Crime Club in 1938. Each mini story had to feature an orange, resulting in six very different tales from Peter Cheyney, Ethel Lina White, David Hume, Nicholas Blake, John Rhode and - in his only foray into writing detective fiction - the publisher himself, William Collins.