The Poisoned Chocolates Case

Anthony Berkeley (born Anthony Berkeley Cox) was an English author and journalist, who wrote some of the more innovative early detective fiction of the 1920s and 1930s. He was also a founding member of the Detection Club, a group of fiction writers that included G.K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and others. The club likely inspired his seventh book The Poisoned Chocolates Case, in which a group of six amateur detectives investigate a death involving a box of nitrobenzene-laced liqueur chocolates. By the time the sixth person presents their solution, it becomes clear who is responsible. Berkeley originally wrote this as a far superior short story ("The Avenging Chance"); the expanded book added conversational filler and a couple unnecessary characters.