A pretty long while back, my boyfriend was making a few purchases on Amazon and needed to buy one more thing to get free shipping. He asked me if I needed anything and for some reason, I thought: I want another Anthony Berkeley mystery. Berkeley’s mysteries are both inventive and hard to find in the local library, so if I want to read them, I’ll have to buy them.

As it happens, the book took a very long while to reach me, and when it did come, there was a big physical TBR pile which is why I only got around to it now. But it was worth the wait and I thoroughly enjoyed this unorthodox mystery.

There’s a rather ghoulish party going on – party members are dressed as famous murderers and victims. To complete the party, three “bodies” made of straw are hung on the gallows. Roger Sheringham is rather enjoying the party, given the number of interesting people there. One interesting person is Ena Stratton, the sister-in-law of the host and she’s so annoying that no one in the room likes her (including Roger, who quickly finds her a bore). Perhaps it’s no surprise that Ena ends up dead, hanging on one of the gallows. The only question is: can Roger convince the police that he’s not the murderer?

As with other Berkeley stories like Trial and Error and Before the Fact, the mystery is turned on its head here. We know who the murderer is pretty early on and the story revolves around Roger’s attempts to help everyone by making it appear like suicide, and then frantically trying to solve the murder so that he doesn’t get blamed for being the murderer while trying to convince the police it’s suicide. It’s actually pretty comedic and if you can get past the fact that you’re not really trying to find a murderer, it’s really fun.

While I didn’t quite sympathise with anyone in the novel, I did find it interesting. I like how Berkeley plays with the expectations of the genre – I was completely fooled by how the story went and never knew quite what to expect. Roger doesn’t act like the typical gentleman sleuth, except when he does, and the police are much smarter than they appear. It’s a clever piece of writing, though I suspect that the reader would need to be familiar with the conventions of the genre in order to see how Berkeley has subverted it; even I’m not sure if I caught everything!

Overall, this was a fun work that I really enjoyed. Berkeley has, once again, inverted the mystery in a very enjoyable way. I think both fans of the traditional mystery and fans who are looking for something new will find something to appreciate in this book.