Murder in the Basement Audiobook By Anthony Berkeley cover art

Murder in the Basement

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Murder in the Basement

By: Anthony Berkeley
Narrated by: Seán Barrett
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When two newlyweds move into their new home, only to discover that a corpse has been buried in their basement a few months prior, a gruelling case is begun to trace the identity of the victim. With all avenues of investigation approaching exhaustion, a tenuous lead offers a chance for Chief Inspector Moresby and leads him to the amateur criminologist Roger Sheringham, who has recently been providing cover work in a school south of London. Desperate for evidence of any kind on the basement case, Moresby begins to sift through the manuscript of a satirical novel Sheringham had been writing about his colleagues at the school, convinced that amongst the cast of teachers hides the victim - and perhaps their murderer.

©1932, 2021 The Estate of Anthony Berkeley Cox, Introduction Martin Edwards (P)2021 Isis Publishing Ltd Detective Mystery Traditional Detectives Fiction Crime Murder Witty
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Author did a good job of creating a standard, banal as the life itself, little plot, with just hints of hidden, crawling under surface, "other motives" - which jump out nicely at the end of mystery's denouement ..

you think you know.. and then there's a twist..

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Berkeley is one of my all time favorite mystery writers. Every book I have read of his I have enjoyed. My favorite is his “The Poisoned Chocolates Case”. I enjoy the English mysteries where reason and psychology solve the mystery over the American beat down with fists to extract truth. A battle of wits is more fun.

Berkeley- Master Mystery Writer

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There are great characters and an interesting plot, along with a very tricky mystery. Worth the read!

Really quite good

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Rather tedious, with too much of the slogging work of following this that and the other to no avail. No one shines in this mystery.

S-l-o-w paced.

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I guess I'm too traditional, but I didn't like the way Berkeley reached the denouement.

Unsatisfying Ending

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This is an almost perfect piece of crime writing, in my opinion. Berkeley has a good red herring, a great cast of characters, and an excellent presentation of the facts. I really enjoyed the layout of the police procedures. The one thing I didn't like so much was his amateur detective swooping in at the end to clinch it. After listening to all of the hard work Moresby does to solve the case, you really feel he earns his win. But this is a minor issue and I otherwise loved listening to this both for the excellent story and the well chosen narrator.

Excellent, understated, engaging

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While it is possible to put together the clues and guess the murderer, Anthony Berkeley’s denouement is sort of a cheat. This is an author to whom I usually give five stars so I was a bit disappointed. Still, the voice, pacing, and characters are classic Golden Age of Mystery so my time with this book was in no way wasted.

Berkeley (kind of) Cheats!

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I enjoy a good golden age detective mystery. This one had a lot of promise, even though a bit slow. I liked the character buildup and the narrator. However, I didn’t like the ending. It was anticlimactic and for me, a big let down. The twist at the end had too many holes and it didn’t bring the closure that comes with golden age mysteries. I was waiting for the big reveal at the end that never came. I felt it ended abruptly.

Didn’t like the ending

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