In a creative twist, a fatally ill man’s great humanitarian act is to seek out and kill someone deserving of death; but the horror of an innocent man being accused of the murder was not an outcome Mr Todhunter, or the friends who advised him, considered. His job is then to prove his own guilt. Dedicated to P.G. Wodehouse, the story is suspenseful, inventive and humorous, with a riveting attention to detail and a profound suggestion of the absurdity of trying to influence destiny.
Its sparkle is captured here by the award-winning narrator David Timson.
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.