Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Ask a Policeman
    Unavailable
    Ask a Policeman
    Unavailable
    Ask a Policeman
    Ebook333 pages5 hours

    Ask a Policeman

    By The Detection Club, Agatha Christie, Simon Winchester and

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateSep 13, 2012
    ISBN9780007468652
    Unavailable
    Ask a Policeman
    Author

    The Detection Club

    “The Detection Club is a private association of writers of detective fiction in Great Britain, existing chiefly for the purpose of eating dinners together at suitable intervals and of talking illimitable shop … Its membership is confined to those who have written genuine detective stories (not adventure tales or ‘thrillers’) and election is secured by a vote of the club on recommendation by two or more members, and involves the undertaking of an oath.” Dorothy L. Sayers.

    Read more from The Detection Club

    Related to Ask a Policeman

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Mystery of James Purdy

      Oct 11, 2022

      Several puzzles of Purdy’s life may never be solved—and probably ought not to be. The post The Mystery of James Purdy appeared first on The Millions.

      12 min read

    • Article

      Those Who Left Us: Select Literary Obits From 2020

      Dec 30, 2020

      This was, after all, the year when everything stopped making sense. The post Those Who Left Us: Select Literary Obits From 2020 appeared first on The Millions.

      12 min read

    • Article

      Top 10 True Crime Novels | Denise Mina

      Oct 20, 2021

      Fictionalised true crime is an odd sub-genre containing either very bad or absolutely fantastic books. They go beyond the non-fiction recitation of known facts to imagine the subjective experience of the actors, they fill in the unknown or re-order k

      5 min read

    • Article

      Jack Higgins obituary

      Apr 10, 2022

      Under his own and several other names, including Jack Higgins, Harry Patterson had published 35 thrillers before, in his mid-40s, he hit the jackpot with The Eagle Has Landed (1975), an instant bestseller in the US, which is said to have sold more th

      6 min read

    • Article

      Top 10 Criminal Duos In Fiction | Peter Swanson

      Mar 1, 2023

      There is a long and robust literary tradition of the crime-solving duo. Holmes and Watson. Nick and Nora Charles. Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. As a writer it’s nice to have two protagonists, if for no other reason tha

      4 min read

    • Article

      Biography & memoir

      Jun 29, 2022

      Biography & memoir
      13 min read

    • Article

      5 Books Making News This Week: Brexit, Blacklists, and Biographies

      Feb 28, 2017

      Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land, Nancy Isenberg’s White Trash, Jane Mayer’s Dark Money, Zachary Roth’s The Great Suppression and Gary Younge’s Another Day in the Death of America are named finalists for the J. Anthony Lukas Boo

      6 min read

    • Article

      The World Of Writing

      Jan 7, 2021

      The World Of Writing
      4 min read

    • Article

      Those Who Left Us: Literary Obits of 2021

      Dec 30, 2021

      This highly selective list of literary lights that were extinguished during the past year ranges from brand names to barely-knowns. The post Those Who Left Us: Literary Obits of 2021 appeared first on The Millions.

      12 min read

    • Article

      International Books

      Jan 13, 2020

      Imagining the world in the first century AD (not yet called that), it’s difficult to envision Christianity (not yet called that) when it was considered a “blasphemous cult”. It’s 35AD in Jerusalem and Saul, a Jew, is hunting down Christians for execu

      5 min read

    • Article

      Devil’s Advocate

      Oct 12, 2023

      Why is it that the wellspoken British baddie has become such a stock character in Hollywood movies? (Alan Rickman in Die Hard; Ian Holm in Alien; George Sanders voicing Shere Khan in The Jungle Book; Peter Cushing, Ian McDiarmid and Christopher Lee i

      2 min read

    • Article

      Miscellaneous

      Jun 30, 2021

      Miscellaneous
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Lady Vanishes

      Feb 24, 2022

      THE MUSIC IMMEDIATELY TRIGGERSa response. The graphics follow. And then there is David Suchet. For 13 seasons, from 1989 to 2013, Poirot provided a comfort blanket for Britain. Such style! Such a world of ease! Agatha Christie is all that is required

      7 min read

    • Article

      The World Of Writing

      Aug 6, 2020

      The World Of Writing
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Art Of Murder The Strange Case Of Walter Sickert And Jack The Ripper

      May 19, 2022

      Whitechapel, London, the autumn of 1888. Through the midnight streets stalks a dark figure, wrapped in a long, checkered coat. As the secretive figure makes his way along Copenhagen Street, he attracts the attention of a group of young girls. Talk of

      15 min read

    • Article

      Cathi Unsworth

      Jan 7, 2021

      Cathi Unsworth
      6 min read

    • Article

      Literary Deaths of 2022

      Dec 29, 2022

      In 2022, we mourned the deaths of many literary giants who remained under-celebrated in their lifetimes. These are some of them. With his eye patch and no-bullshit demeanor, Andrew Vachss was a man on a mission. He was an author of hard-boiled fictio

      13 min read

    • Article

      The Old Un’s Notes

      Jan 10, 2024

      Stanley Price (19312019), the playwright and screenwriter, had many lucky encounters. His witty stories, which all appeared in The Oldie, have been collected by his son Munro Price into a delightful book My Lunch with Marilyn and Other Stories. As a

      5 min read

    • Article

      Shelf Life

      Dec 2, 2021

      Shelf Life
      4 min read

    • Article

      THE Reading room

      Nov 27, 2019

      THE Reading room
      7 min read

    • Article

      Fiction

      Sep 22, 2021

      Fiction
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Lies Men Tell

      Jan 31, 2021

      As far as David Bishop is concerned, he’s always been a crime writer; he’s just spent the past few decades writing other stories before he got to his “debut crime novel”. “Crime is a brilliant narrative engine, which is why it underpins so many other

      5 min read

    • Article

      Those Who Left Us: Select Literary Obituaries of 2017

      Jan 10, 2018

      Poets, editors, songwriters, teachers, journalists, novelists—some great writers and some under-sung ones left us this year. Here, in chronological order of their deaths, is a selective compendium of literary obituaries from 2017.     Bhara

      15 min read

    • Article

      Norman Mailer

      Aug 25, 2021

      In April 1965, Norman Mailer and his wife Beverly were in the UK to promote his book An American Dream and to visit friends Diana and Lionel Trilling in Oxford. His biographer relates that, in a letter to Diana Trilling, Mailer wrote that the novel w

      2 min read

    Reviews for Ask a Policeman

    3.5/5

    9 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      Well, that was a dismal failure. The first chapter, by Rhode, is very well written. He is undervalued. Then Simpson and Mitchel parody each other and Berkeley and Sayers parody each other. Berkeley is by far the best. The conclusion by Kennedy is crap. He organized the project, so blame him.
    • 3/5
      First a warning - although her name appears in large letters on the cover of the edition I own, Agatha Christie had nothing to do with the original book, but has had a short essay added for this edition (presumably in order to boost sales). This is frankly misleading. Having said that, the book proper is worth reading, if only for its quite unusual premise, which is that it involves four well-known (at the time of original printing in 1933) crime writers pastiching each other's work. So the part of the book involving Lord Peter Wimsey was written by Helen Simpson, and the part involving her detective, the actor Sir John Saumarez, was written by Dorothy Sayers. Similarly Gladys Mitchell and Anthony Berkeley exchanged sleuths. This works surprisingly well, but the effectiveness is somewhat cancelled by the fact that only two of these characters (Wimsey and Mrs. Bradley) are likely to be known to modern readers. The actual plot is somewhat melodramatic (an evil press baron is murdered, and the suspects include an archbishop and a politician) but the main problem is that the separate sections don't really gel with each other. The best part is that involving Mrs. Bradley, which makes one regret that Helen Simpson wrote so few books before her premature death. Martin Edwards, who is the Detection Club's official archivist, provides a real foreword with useful information about the contributors (the other two, John Rhode and Milward Kennedy, set up the plot and provide the denouement respectively). Overall verdict - worth reading at least once, but whether you'll ever want to reread it is somewhat doubtful.