Not to Be Taken
“Jonathan Keeble’s calm baritone adds just the right period touches to this seemingly simple mystery…Keeble subtly introduces a host of characters, each with a motive. This mystery was originally part of a competition for readers in 1938, when it was published as A Puzzle in Poison. Keeble deftly lays out all the puzzle pieces, but putting it together will challenge even the cleverest armchair detective. Listeners may want to listen again to be sure they heard the shocking conclusion correctly.”
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In the comfortable English Dorsetshire village of Anneypenny in the 1930s, fruit farmer Douglas Sewell—narrator of the story—sees his friend John die in agony.
The death certificate states gastric ulcers, but the post mortem’s revealing of poison punctures Anneypenny’s idyllic backdrop. Soon every friend and neighbor seems to harbor something suspicious.
Douglas challenges his readers and listeners to answer the key questions before throwing out several scenarios and turning them upside-down in a tantalizing path to the truth.
A journalist as well as a novelist, Anthony Berkeley was a founding member of the Detection Club and one of crime fiction’s greatest innovators. He was one of the first to predict the development of the “psychological” crime novel.
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