Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 1. Whole No. 344, July 1972

The Jury Box by John Dickson Carr{© 1972 by John Dickson Carr}

Let there be no iron rule; let the approach vary as seems best.

This month, with your permission, I would pay belated tribute to that English writer who, though a master of mystery, has left behind him (so far as this country is concerned, at least) no work now available in paperback. If I must send you to second-hand bookshops in search of some novel he wrote, almost any novel he wrote, that’s better than letting you miss them. Probably you won’t mind; being devoted to blood and thunder, you may even relish the search.

Anthony Berkeley Cox, born 1893, died in December of 1970. So far forgot may be auld acquaintance that I did not learn of his passing until fifteen months later. Therefore this appreciation must contain not only tribute but apology.

Tony, as we called him, founded the London Detection Club. Misled by some confusion whose source can’t be traced, several sound critics have stated that he founded it in 1928. Though he may have conceived the idea in that year, the club was not actually organized until 1932. This fact appeared in the brochure they once distributed to new members, together with Tony’s official title of First Freeman.

“Now what,” friends often asked, “does First Freeman mean?” Once, to avert a threatened rumpus, Peacemaker John Rhode swore it meant the right to attend all committee meetings and vote at them. Anyway, that’s what Tony always did; his title had to mean something. But, since other charter members had been R. Austin Freeman and Freeman Wills Crofts, a simpler explanation may be found in his own impassioned avowal.

“With Freemans to the right, Freemans to the left, Freemans on every side,” he had declared, “the founder of this club is damn well going to be First Freeman, and don’t you forget it!”

Lucky fellow, Tony. Of well-to-do family, with an independent income, he had no need to struggle in the marketplace. Turning to detective stories because he so much enjoyed them, in 1924 he wrote The Layton Court Mystery as Anthony Berkeley.

Then came a distinguished series, his sleuths Roger Sheringham and milquetoast Ambrose Chitterwick: each novel of dazzling ingenuity, each with a twist or double-twist to yank the rug from under us at the end. As the world’s best practitioner Anthony Berkeley (Great Britain) shared equal honors, as he still shares them, with the editor-in-chief of this magazine (U.S.A.).

As early as ’31 he had opened a new door. In Malice Aforethought, calling himself Francis Iles, he studied the mind of a homicidal country doctor. “Murder without mystery,” his publisher rather triumphantly cried. With Before the Fact, which followed, we met a young man of such charm and callousness as to be the death of any person who got in Johnnie Aysgarth’s way.

Among aesthetes, who shudder at detective fiction, it has become the fashion to praise these “psychological” studies for superior characterization, and to exalt Francis Iles as though Anthony Berkeley had never existed. The true reason they say this lies deeper. Having no ingenuity of their own, they resent ingenuity in others and bitterly decry it as they decry the element of surprise.

Much though I admire Tony’s work as Iles, give me Berkeley every time! Give me murder with mystery, characters no less vivid for wearing masks; give me the sensational case, the fair but cryptic evidence building towards some thunderbolt disclosure.

Certain Berkeley books you must read. Find Trial and Error, that ironic tragi-comedy. Find The Poisoned Chocolates Case, multiple solutions in one. Find The Piccadilly Murder (how to commit your crime in public); find The Silk Stocking Murders (mad strangler of women); find Dead Mrs. Stratton or my own particular favorite, Top-Storey Murder.

Those nineteen thirties were the Detection Club’s golden years. Tony, its First Freeman, remained a moving spirit. Then, with abrupt effect, the storyteller shut up shop.

Following As for the Woman... in September ’39, both Iles and Berkeley fell silent. He wrote that last book, Tony told me long afterwards, under a severe emotional strain; appearing as war was declared, the book fell flat. It had finished him, he insisted, and couldn’t be persuaded otherwise.

A great pity, though. Some of us mystery mongers, continuing to ply our trade, merely grow old. Tony, who downed tools too soon, deserves to become immortal.