Forgotten Book - The Perfect Murder

I have a long-standing interest in collaborative detective novels. The Floating Admiral is an old favourite of mine, a Detection Club classic that is still earning the Club royalties, more than ninety years after it first saw the light of day. Of course, it has the advantage of being associated with Agatha Christie, that most bankable of writers. The Queen of Crime wrote an early chapter in the book, and it's a highlight of the novel.

The Perfect Murder is an extremely unusual example of a collaborative novel and is very different from books such as The Floating Admiral. It began life as an exercise organised by Jack Hitt, a senior editor at Harper's magazine. He had a round-table discussion with five leading mystery writers of the day - three Americans, two Brits - and this was published in the magazine. From there, it grew into a full-length book.

The five writers were Donald E. Westlake, Tony Hillerman, Lawrence Block, Peter Lovesey, and Sarah Caudwell, and one of the merits of choosing this particular quintet - quite apart from their literary ingenuity is that each of them has a distinctive voice. I was especially entertained by Peter Lovesey's contributions, and noted that he managed to include a reference to his favourite 'true crime' - the Brides in the Bath case.

The set-up is that Hitt, in the person of wealthy 'Tim', is contemplating murdering his wife and framing her lover for the crime. He seeks to enlist the aid of gifted mystery writers in order to achieve his aim. Each of the five authors comes up with a highly elaborate scenario, and the plot thickens from there. Very definitely a one-off, but intriguing, it's a book I'm hoping to explore further in a newsletter soon, as Peter Lovesey gave me some of the background information, including a letter from Jack Hitt discussing the project and the original magazine article.