Not to Be Taken (1938)

My review:

One of Berkeley’s most straightforward and least experimental tales—deceptively so, perhaps?  For, while the setting is the classic small English village and the murder the even more classic one of death by arsenical poisoning, Berkeley’s gifts for characterisation, psychology and dialogue are at their most impressive, showing how Cox’s gifts would work with the detective story proper and suggesting the direction in which they would have developed had he not softly and suddenly vanished away in 1939.  There is little detection in the material sense: the first half is largely conversation, revealing character and psychology (detection from the inside); the clues, without detection, are given as evidence at the coroner’s inquest, recalling the similar approach adopted in The Poisoned Chocolates Case.  Yet this novel approach, the detective story without detection, works extremely well.  The red herrings of Military Intelligence and Nazism are neither too unconvincing nor distracting, and the solutionis both psychologically and physically convincing, demonstrating how a sympathetic character cold-bloodedly commits an unnecessary (and undesired) murder.

Note that Blake stole the end for Head of a Traveller.

To the Bibliography.

To the Berkeley Page.

To the Grandest Game in the World.

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