Mystery Writers Read by the Hoovers Part XI: Life is a Box of Chocolates

By Thomas F. Schwartz

The movie Forrest Gump features Tom Hanks uttering the famous line: "Life is like a box of chocolates…You never know what you're gonna get."

If the screen writer were mystery author Anthony Berkeley, it might be The Poisoned Chocolates Case. The French philosopher Voltaire posited, "The perfect is the enemy of the good." Mystery writer Christopher Bush recast it as The Perfect Murder Case. Both mysteries were fixtures at Camp Rapidan and read the Herbert and Lou Hoover.

Anthony Berkeley penned a chapter in a previous mystery read by the Hoovers, The Floating Admiral. One of the founders of The Detection Club, his birth name was Anthony Berkeley Cox although he used the pen names of A. Monmouth Platts, Francis Iles, and Anthony Berkeley. As Francis Iles, he published Before the Fact (1932). It was picked up by Alfred Hitchcock and made into the film Suspicion starring Joan Fontaine and Cary Grant. A career officer, Berkeley fought in World War I and subject to a poison gas attack that permanently damaged his health. Writing was a way to earn a living both as a journalist and author.

The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929) is much like The Floating Admiral in that a group of amateur detectives who meet on a regular basis are approached by Scotland Yard to solve a murder. A reoccurring character, Roger Sheringham, heads the group of amateur sleuths. The authorities determined that a box of poisoned chocolates was sent to Sir Eustace Pennefather, a philanderer in the process of divorcing his wife.

Pennefather, not knowing who they were from, decides to discard the chocolates but is asked by fellow club member, Graham Bendix if he could have them. Bendix lost a bet with his wife and owed her a box of chocolates. Pennefather grants the request. Bendix and his wife consume the chocolates only for his wife to die of poison and Bendix to fight for his life in the hospital.

Sheringham and his gang take the clues provided by the authorities and have but days to do their own investigations and present their conclusions on who poisoned the chocolates and why. Each chapter presents a different member of the group and their conclusions on "who done it."

Christopher Bush is another British mystery writer born with the name Charlie Christmas Bush. He worked most of his life as a schoolmaster with a short interruption as a soldier in World War I and again in World War II. He wrote 63 mysteries using the character Ludovic Travers as his crime solver. A member of The Detection Club, Bush reflected an analytical approach to solving crimes that pose the perfect alibis.

In The Perfect Murder Case, Scotland Yard is apprised in a letter by "Marius" that a perfect murder will be committed. The police find wealthy T.T. Richleigh dead inside a locked room. All the suspects have perfect alibis with collaborating witnesses attesting to their locations far away from the scene of the crime. Scotland Yard appeals to Ludovic Travers and an ex-police detective, John Franklin, to discover the truth. Through diligence and some good luck, they break the perfect alibi of one of the four main suspects and thus solve the perfect murder case.

A map from the mystery novel The Perfect Murder Case.

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