Elusion Aforethought: The Life and Writing of Anthony Berkeley Cox

Elusion Aforethought provides significant new material on the work of crime and detection fiction writer Anthony Berkeley Cox, a popular and prolific English journalist, satirist, and novelist in the period between World Wars I and II. Cox has been called one of the most important and influential of Golden Age detective fiction writers by such authorities as Haycraft, Symons, and Keating, yet he occupies a surprisingly ambivalent position in the history of the crime genre.

Cox was a Golden Age detective novelist who was one of the cofounders (with Dorothy L. Sayers) of the Detection Club. He wrote under his own name and under the pseudonyms Anthony Berkeley and Francis Iles. No previous books have been written about Cox, in part because he was, in the Australian academic Turnbull's words, preoccupied with anonymity, making the biographer's work difficult. Cox was particularly well known as an early practitioner of the inverted detective story (Malice Aforethought and Before the Fact, both published under Francis Iles). His detective creations include Roger Sheringham, Mr. Chitterwick, and Inspector Moresby (characters written under Anthony Berkeley). Turnbull offers more a literary than a personal biography, with only one chapter outlining Cox's life and the remaining chapters devoted to descriptions of the literary works produced under each of Cox's pseudonyms. Additionally, Turnbull describes critical responses to Cox's works and postulates on their importance in the development of crime fiction. Recommended where Golden Age crime fiction is of interest.?Denise Johnson, Bradley Univ. Lib., Peoria, Ill.
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