The Poisoned Chocolates Case
Decide its fate
The record
Time
An eveningA season256 pages, about 5 hours: four-fifths the length of a typical book on the shelf.
Getting in
Walk right inSteep climbOne reader reports the opening moved slowly; the solutions begin at chapter five.
What it gives
Plot and actionIdeas to live byIn 12 reviews from critics and book blogs, 11 credit the plot and 8 credit the ideas or a change in how they live.
One of a kind
Others do thisNothing else doesA reviewer sets it beside Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, on the shelf at 256 pages.
The case for it
on the six detectives
“The blustering ancient lawyer, the razor witted female author”
a book blog on the parade of solutions
“makes you wonder if you will ever trust a solution given in a mystery novel”
a book blog on the prose
“vim, snark, weightless insight, and effortless thrust-and-parry”
a book blog on the six solutions
“Berkeley has given us six different styles of detection”
a book blog
The case against
on fair play
“if any reader would or could have worked it out”
a book blog on the novelist’s chapter
“that section of the book struck me as the most self-indulgent”
a book blog on the book’s argument
“a seemingly-convincing argument, filled with holes and bias”
a book blog on the crowded cast
“Many are furiously taking notes and trying to keep ‘the facts straight’”
four stars · a book blog
