The Second Shot (A Roger Sheringham case)

A ROGER SHERINGHAM MYSTERY. Detective writer John Hillyard is entertaining a small house party at Minton Deeps Farm when a shocking accident takes place. Shortly after enacting a murder drama for their own amusement, the guests are returning to the house when Eric Scott Davies, the man who played victim, is found dead after two gunshots go off. The police suspect murder, but when Roger Sheringham is summoned from London it is not by Superintendent Hancock but by one of the guests. In a web of scandal, opportunity and multiple motives, the case turns out to be more complex than even Sheringham could have expected.

Born in 1893, Anthony Berkeley (Anthony Berkeley Cox) was a British crime writer and a leading member of the genre's Golden Age. Educated at Sherborne School and University College London, Berkeley served in the British army during WWI before becoming a journalist. His first novel, The Layton Court Murders, was published anonymously in 1925. It introduced Roger Sheringham, the amateur detective who features in many of the author's novels including the classic Poisoned Chocolates Case. In 1930, Berkeley founded the legendary Detection Club in London along with Agatha Christie, Freeman Wills Crofts and other established mystery writers. It was in 1938, under the pseudonym Francis Iles (which Berkeley also used for novels) that he took up work as a book reviewer for John O'London's Weekly and The Daily Telegraph. He later wrote for The Sunday Times in the mid 1940s, and then for The Guardian from the mid 1950s until 1970. A key figure in the development of crime fiction, he died in 1971.