Death in the House. Illustrated, livre ebook

Anthony Berkeley's 1939 mystery unfolds in one of fiction's most audacious settings: the floor of the British House of Commons. As the Secretary of State for India rises to introduce a contentious bill on colonial policy, he suddenly collapses and dies mid-speech. Initial assumptions point to a stroke, but a subsequent examination reveals a far more sinister cause — poisoning, carried out in full view of Parliament through an almost fantastical method involving a poisoned thorn hidden near the victim's collar. The killing sends shockwaves through Westminster, threatening to derail the legislation and exposing the fragile political machinery behind Britain's handling of Indian independence. The investigation falls to those closest to the dead minister, who must untangle a web of political rivalries, personal grudges, and international intrigue while the business of government continues around them. Berkeley, better known for his Roger Sheringham series and for pioneering the psychological crime novel under his pen name Francis Iles, uses this standalone work to blend traditional whodunit mechanics with sharp commentary on Britain's late-1930s political anxieties. Contemporary critics were divided: some praised his ability to make a politically charged setting genuinely entertaining, while others felt the central murder method strained credulity. Even so, the novel is valued for its vivid, insider's view of parliamentary life on the eve of the Second World War. This illustrated edition preserves Berkeley's characteristic wit and his mastery of the "double twist" ending that Agatha Christie herself once praised. As his penultimate novel and his final full whodunit before he abandoned detective fiction altogether, Death in the House stands as a fitting capstone to Berkeley's career — a novel that trades the country house for the corridors of power, and finds murder just as much at home there. For readers of Golden Age crime fiction, it offers both a clever puzzle and a telling snapshot of a world edging toward war.