It has been surprisingly difficult to get ahold of Berkeley’s mysteries, since the library only has the Chinese translations and I couldn’t really find his books in stores. Until I stumbled across Trial and Error in BookXcess (that wonderful remaindered book website) and promptly got a copy.

One of the novelists during the Golden Age of Mystery, Berkeley was a prolific writer and one of the founding members of the Detective Club. As with most Golden Age novelists whose books that I’ve managed to read, it’s a pity that he’s relatively unknown today (at least, I hadn’t heard of him until I started reading up about the Golden Age of Mystery).

Trial and Error is an extremely innovative book because the protagonist, Todhunter, is trying to prove his guilt. After being diagnosed with a life-threatening condition and told he only has months to live, Todhunter gathers a group of friends to see what he should do to make his last months worth it. The answer, it seems, is murder. A bit shocked, Todhunter scouts for a suitable victim and finds one, only to see the police arrest and try the wrong man! With the help of his friends, Todhunter spends his last few months trying to prove that he was the murderer.

I found this to be a very enjoyable and ingenious mystery, not least because it starts with a known criminal who’s trying to detect his own crime. The twists and turns of the court case was fascinating and I had so much fun reading about how Todhunter was trying to prove his guilt and how his friends were striking a balance between helping him and making sure that he doesn’t die.

As a character, Todhunter was a very interesting person. He’s a self-proclaimed cranky old man, but it’s clear that all his young relatives like him and he’s quite able to make friends. He turns the stereotype of the invalid upside down and his drive to keep an innocent man from hanging is probably the only thing that kept him alive all these months.

I may be wrong, but I felt like Berkeley had a lot of fun writing this. The character of Todhunter is amusing and the narration has humour sprinkled all over it. The one that made me laugh out loud was the opening of the chapter after Todhunter is convicted, as the book describes how the various newspapers react to the verdict:

“Did the incomparable British judicial system then contain such traps as might catch an innocent man and let the guilty escape?

“The Times had a thoughtful leader proving that there was nothing wrong with the system and inclined to deplore the fact that, in spite of the cautious attitude of the judge, Mr Todhunter should have gotten himself convicted, at the same time equally deprecating the fact that Vincent Palmer had not somehow managed to get himself acquitted. The Daily Telegraphy had an equally thoughtful leader saying at length exactly nothing at all. The Morning Post was inclined to believe that some subtle Communist propaganda had been at work. The News Chronicle was more certain than ever that the civil war in Spain was the indirect outcome of the whole unfortunate affair.”

The only nitpick I have about this was that there were some pretty obvious typos in the book (I remember seeing Mr Chitterwick’s name being spelt as Critterwick). I’m not sure if this edition was printed from scanned versions of the original and the OCR made a mistake, but I would hope that future reprints fix this issue.

Overall, this was a refreshing and well-written mystery. To me, it proves that we’ve got many overlooked gems from the Golden Age of Mystery, and I hope that we’ll see more of such stories reprinted and made widely available.