Ask a Policeman

by Members of the Detection Club

Other authorsDorothy L. Sayers (Contributor), Agatha Christie (Contributor), HarperCollins (Editor), David Timson (Narrator), Helen Simpson (Contributor), Anthony Berkeley (Contributor), John Rhode (Contributor), Gladys Mitchell (Contributor), Milward Kennedy (Contributor)

Digital audiobook, 2020

Series

The Detection Club (3)

Publication

HarperCollins (2020)

Original publication date

1933

2013 (80th anniversary edition)

Description

This classic crime novel by six different authors is introduced by Martin Edwards, archivist of the Detection Club, and includes a never-before-published Preface by Agatha Christie, 'Detective Writers in England', in which she discusses her approach to writing and her fellow writers in the Detection Club. Lord Comstock is a barbarous newspaper tycoon with enemies in high places. His murder in the study of his country house poses 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... The contributors to ASK A POLICEMAN are: John Rhode, Helen Simpson, Gladys Mitchell, Anthony Berkeley, Dorothy L. Sayers, Milward Kennedy, with Agatha Christie and Martin Edwards.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member johnclaydon

Well, that was a dismal failure. The first chapter, by Rhode, is very well written. He is undervalued. Then Simpson and Mitchel parody each other and Berkeley and Sayers parody each other. Berkeley is by far the best. The conclusion by Kennedy is crap. He organized the project, so blame him.

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LibraryThing member JonRob

First a warning - although her name appears in large letters on the cover of the edition I own, Agatha Christie had nothing to do with the original book, but has had a short essay added for this edition (presumably in order to boost sales). This is frankly misleading. Having said that, the book

proper is worth reading, if only for its quite unusual premise, which is that it involves four well-known (at the time of original printing in 1933) crime writers pastiching each other's work. So the part of the book involving Lord Peter Wimsey was written by Helen Simpson, and the part involving her detective, the actor Sir John Saumarez, was written by Dorothy Sayers. Similarly Gladys Mitchell and Anthony Berkeley exchanged sleuths. This works surprisingly well, but the effectiveness is somewhat cancelled by the fact that only two of these characters (Wimsey and Mrs. Bradley) are likely to be known to modern readers. The actual plot is somewhat melodramatic (an evil press baron is murdered, and the suspects include an archbishop and a politician) but the main problem is that the separate sections don't really gel with each other. The best part is that involving Mrs. Bradley, which makes one regret that Helen Simpson wrote so few books before her premature death. Martin Edwards, who is the Detection Club's official archivist, provides a real foreword with useful information about the contributors (the other two, John Rhode and Milward Kennedy, set up the plot and provide the denouement respectively). Overall verdict - worth reading at least once, but whether you'll ever want to reread it is somewhat doubtful.

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