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When Mrs Elsie Vane is found dead at the bottom of the cliffs at Ludmouth Bay on the Hampshire coast, the verdict is of accidental death. However, when the Daily Courier learns that Inspector Moresby of Scotland Yard has been making discreet enquiries into Mrs Vane’s affairs, the newspaper’s editor sends down gentleman sleuth Roger Sheringham to find out why. Roger’s investigations uncover murky truths about Mrs Vane’s life and a second, grisly murder… ABOUT THE AUTHOR Anthony Berkeley Cox was a best-selling and much-admired English crime writer who wrote under a number of pen-names, including Anthony Berkeley, Francis Iles and A. Monmouth Platts. Born in Watford in 1893 he studied at Oxford University and worked as a journalist after serving as an officer in the First World War. He created Roger Sheringham for his first crime novel, The Layton Court Mystery, published in 1925. Amateur detective Sheringham, was loquacious, conceited, occasionally downright offensive, and something of a man-about-town with contacts in all the right places. However, infallibility was not one of Sheringham’s virtues. His most famous outing was in The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929) which sold over one million copies, received rapturous reviews and is regarded today as a classic of the Golden Age of Crime. In the same year it was published, Cox created ‘The Detection Club’, the illustrious dining club of detective story writers. He wrote 19 crime novels between 1925 and 1939 before returning to journalism, writing for The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times and between 1950-70 The Guardian . He died in 1971. PRAISE FOR ANTHONY BERKELEY ‘All his stories are amusing, intriguing, and he is a master of the final twist, the surprise denouement’ Agatha Christie ‘There never was another writer of detective stories who managed to make his red herrings smell so good’ The Observer ‘The most brilliant of Agatha Christie’s contemporaries’ Publishers Weekly
Author
Anthony Berkeley Cox was an English crime writer. He wrote under several pen-names, including Francis Iles, Anthony Berkeley Cox, and A. Monmouth Platts. One of the founders of The Detection Club Cox was born in Watford and was educated at Sherborne School and University College London. He served in the Army in World War I and thereafter worked as a journalist, contributing a series of humourous sketches to the magazine 'Punch'. These were later published collectively (1925) under the Anthony Berkeley pseudonym as 'Jugged Journalism' and the book was followed by a series of minor comic novels such as 'Brenda Entertains' (1925), 'The Family Witch' (1925) and 'The Professor on Paws' (1926). It was also in 1925 when he published, anonymously to begin with, his first detective novel, 'The Layton Court Mystery', which was apparently written for the amusement of himself and his father, who was a big fan of the mystery genre. Later editions of the book had the author as Anthony Berkeley. He discovered that the financial rewards were far better for detective fiction so he concentrated his efforts on that genre for the following 14 years, using mainly the Anthony Berkeley pseudonym but also writing four novels and three collections of short stories as Francis Isles and one novel as A Monmouth Platts. In 1928 he founded the famous Detection Club in London and became its first honorary secretary. In the mid-1930s he began reviewing novels, both mystery and non-mystery, for 'The Daily Telegraph' under the Francis Isles pseudonym, which he had first used for 'Malice Aforethought' in 1931. In 1939 he gave up writing detective fiction for no apparent reason although it has been suggested that he came into a large inheritance at the time or that his alleged remark, 'When I find something that pays better than detective stories I shall write that' had some relevance. However, he produced nothing significant after he finished writing with 'Death in the House' (Berkeley) and 'As for the Woman' (Isles) in 1939. He did, however, continue to review books for such as 'John O'London's Weekly', 'The Sunday Times', 'The Daily Telegraph' and, from the mid-1950s to 1970, 'The Guardian'. In addition he produced 'O England!', a study of social conditions and politics in 1934. He and his wife lived in an old house in St John's Wood, London, and he had an office in The Strand where he was listed as one of the two directors of A B Cox Ltd, a company whose business was unspecified! Alfred Hitchcock adapted the Francis Isles' title 'Before the Fact' for his film 'Suspicion' in 1941 and in the same year Cox supplied a script for another film 'Flight from Destiny', which was produced by Warner Brothers. His most enduring character is Roger Sheringham who featured in 10 Anthony Berkeley novels and two posthumous collections of short stories. He died on 9 March 1971. Gerry Wolstenholme January 2012 (less)
