Jumping Jenny

Set in post-WWI England, this outstanding 1933 mystery from Berkeley (1893–1971) opens at “a murderer-and-victim party” outside London attended by amateur sleuth Roger Sheringham. The respectable guests are garbed as prominent killers, including Dr. Crippen and Jack the Ripper. The host, Ronald Stratton, who writes detective stories “full of a rather gruesome humour,” has even decorated his flat roof with a gallows, complete with three hanging dummies. The festivities turn grim after a guest finds a woman’s corpse in place of one of the stuffed figures. Sheringham rules out suicide, since there was nothing nearby for the woman to have stood on. For a surprising reason, however, he alters the crime scene by moving a chair near the body to mislead the police into concluding that she took her own life. In doing so, Sheringham places himself in legal jeopardy as he tries to both identify the killer and conceal his own complicity in altering the crime scene. Berkely adroitly plays on readers’ expectations of genre conventions with a witty and tricky plot and a genuinely shocking conclusion. The British Library Crime Classics series does golden age fans a great service with this reissue. (Jan.)