Not to Be Taken

From Shelf: Official Indie Fiction Bestsellers (week 16, 2025)

A true challenge to Golden Age fans, famous for its light-touch clues hidden through the narrative, and an ending that still resonates today. Set in the countryside of Dorset and Somerset, with lashings of international intrigue.

"...now we have Not to Be Taken, a compact and fascinating essay in the art of home detection." Torquemada in The Observer, 1938

"The murder is by arsenic; and although the number of suspects is strictly limited the construction is so ingenious that to attain the correct solution of the problem requires all the reader's concentration; to skip is fatal." Times Literary Supplement, 1938

John Waterhouse has died of some gastric complication. Exhumed at his brother's request, it transpires that he has been killed by arsenical poisoning, though nobody in the sleepy village of Anneypenny seems to have had a reason to do him ill. Rumours abound of Nazi intrigue and military skullduggery, but whatever the motive, the truth remains; this was murder.

Originally serialised as a competition with a prize for the readers that could answer Berkeley's direct challenge of 'who was the poisoner?', Not to Be Taken remains one of the most fiendish exercises in subtle cluework and detection from the Golden Age of Crime.

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