The Floating Admiral

Agatha Christie Dorothy L. Sayers G.K. Chesterton and nine other writers from the legendary Detection Club collaborate in this fiendishly clever but forgotten crime novel first published 80 years ago. Inspector Rudge does not encounter many cases of murder in the sleepy seaside town of Whynmouth. But when an old sailor lands a rowing boat containing a fresh corpse with a stab wound to the chest the Inspectors investigation immediately comes up against several obstacles. The vicar whose boat the body was found in is clearly withholding information and the victims niece has disappeared. There is clearly more to this case than meets the eye — even the identity of the victim is called into doubt. Inspector Rudge begins to wonder just how many people have contributed to this extraordinary crime and whether he will ever unravel it! In 1931 Agatha Christie Dorothy L. Sayers and ten other crime writers from the newly-formed Detection Club collaborated in publishing a unique crime novel. In a literary game of consequences each author would write one chapter leaving G.K. Chesterton to write a typically paradoxical prologue and Anthony Berkeley to tie up all the loose ends. In addition each of the authors provided their own solution in a sealed envelope all of which appeared at the end of the book with Agatha Christies ingenious conclusion acknowledged at the time to be enough to make the book worth buying on its own. The authors of this novel are: G. K. Chesterton Canon Victor Whitechurch G. D. H. Cole and Margaret Cole Henry Wade Agatha Christie John Rhode Milward Kennedy Dorothy L. Sayers Ronald Knox Freeman Wills Crofts Edgar Jepson Clemence Dane and Anthony Berkeley.