0- The much-revered crime writer Anthony Berkeley's first-ever crime novel. - 'A continuously readable and exciting guessing game' NEW YORK HERALD-TRIBUNE - 'A mystery that really mystifies and a detective who really detects' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT Victor Stanworth, a genial old man of sixty, apparently without a care in the world, is entertaining a party of friends at his country house, Layton Court. One morning he is found shot in the library. Was it suicide or murder? Roger Sheringham, one of the guests, determines to solve the mystery. He sets about it as he might do in real life. He is not one of those hawk-eyed, tight-lipped detectives who pursue their inexorable and silent way to the very heart of things. He makes a mistake or two occasionally, but he does not conceal any of the evidence and the reader has the same data to go upon as the detective, and is carried breathlessly through to the end. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Anthony Berkeley Cox was a best-selling and much-admired English crime writer who wrote under a number of pen-names, including Anthony Berkeley, Francis Iles and A. Monmouth Platts. Born in Watford in 1893 he studied at Oxford University and worked as a journalist after serving as an officer in the First World War. He created Roger Sheringham for his first crime novel, THE LAYTON COURT MYSTERY, published in 1925. Amateur detective Sheringham, was loquacious, conceited, occasionally downright offensive, and something of a man-about-town with contacts in all the right places. However, infallibility was not one of Sheringham's virtues. His most famous outing was in THE POISONED CHOCOLATES CASE (1929) which sold over one million copies, received rapturous reviews and is regarded today as a classic of the Golden Age of Crime. In the same year it was published, Cox created 'The Detection Club', the illustrious dining club of detective story writers. He wrote 19 crime novels between 1925 and 1939 before returning to journalism, writing for THE DAILY TELEGRAPH, THE SUNDAY TIMES and between 1950-70 THE GUARDIAN. He died in 1971. PRAISE FOR ANTHONY BERKELEY: 'All his stories are amusing, intriguing, and he is a master of the final twist, the surprise denouement' AGATHA CHRISTIE; 'There never was another writer of detective stories who managed to make his red herrings smell so good' THE OBSERVER; 'The most brilliant of Agatha Christie's contemporaries' PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.