Anthony Berkeley Cox


Anthony Berkeley Cox was an English crime writer. He wrote under several pen-names, including Francis Iles, Anthony Berkeley and A. Monmouth Platts.

Life

Anthony Berkeley Cox was born in 1893 in Watford, and educated at Sherborne School and University College, Oxford. After serving in the British Army in the First World War, he worked as a journalist for many years, contributing to such magazines as Punch and The Humorist.
His first novel, The Layton Court Mystery, 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 Detection Club in London along with Agatha Christie, Freeman Wills Crofts and other established mystery writers.
His 1932 novel, Before the Fact was adapted into the 1941 classic film Suspicion, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine. Trial and Error was turned into the unusual 1941 film Flight From Destiny starring Thomas Mitchell.
In 1938, he took up book reviewing for John O'London's Weekly and the Daily Telegraph, writing under his pen name Francis Iles. He also wrote for the Sunday Times in the 1940s and for the Manchester Guardian, later The Guardian, from the mid-1950s until 1970. A key figure in the development of crime fiction, he died in 1971 in St John's Wood, London.

Novels and stories

Published as Anthony Berkeley

Roger Sheringham

Novels

Published as A. B. Cox