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'Lord Comstock is a barbarous newspaper tycoon with enemies in high places. His murder in the study of his country houseposes a dilemma for the Home Secretary. In the hours before his death, Lord Comstock’s visitors included the government Chief Whip, an Archbishop, and the Assistant Commissioner for Scotland Yard. Suspicion falls upon them all and threatens the impartiality of any police investigation. Abandoning protocol, the Home Secretary invites four famous detectives to solve the case: Mrs Adela Bradley, Sir John Saumarez, Lord Peter Wimsey, and Mr Roger Sheringham. All are different, all are plausible, all are on their own – and none of them can ask a policeman…'
Source: Publisher's blurb (2012 reprint).
Notes
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Contents indexed selectively. Only works written by Australian authors or with Australian content are individually indexed on AustLit.
The full list of contents is as follows:
- 1. Death at Hursley Lodge (John Rhode)
- 2. Mrs Bradley's Dilemma (Helen Simpson)
- 3. Sir John Takes His Cue (Gladys Mitchell)
- 4. Lord Peter's Privy Council (Anthony Berkeley)
- 5. The Conclusions of Mr Roger Sheringham (Dorothy L. Sayers)
- 6. If You Want to Know ... (Milward Kennedy)
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Essentially a round-robin novel: John Rhode plotted the murder and created the suspects, and four established crime writers set their detectives to the task of solving the case. However, the writers swapped their usual detective with another: Gladys Mitchell wrote Helen Simpson's detective Sir John Saumarez, Helen Simpson wrote Mitchell's detective Mrs Bradley, Dorothy L. Sayers wrote Anthony Bereklet's detective Roger Sheringham, and Anthony Berkeley wrote Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey. The volume therefore partakes of both parody and inventive crime writing.
Contents
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Mrs Bradley's Dilemma,
single work
short story
detective
Helen Simpson brings Mrs Vera Bradley (the private detective created by Gladys Mitchell) to bear on the question of who killed Lord Comstock.
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Sir John Takes His Cue,
single work
short story
Gladys Mitchell brings Sir John Saumarez (a private detective created by Helen Simpson and Clemence Dane) to bear on the question of who killed Lord Comstock.
