''Death at Breakfast'' is a 1936 detective novel by John Rhode, the

pen name A pen name, also called a ''nom de plume'' or a literary double, is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen na ...

of the British writer Cecil Street. It is the twenty third in his long-running series of novels featuring Lancelot Priestley, a Golden Age armchair detective.Reilly p.1257 It received a negative review from

Cecil Day-Lewis Cecil Day-Lewis (or Day Lewis; 27 April 1904 – 22 May 1972), often written as C. Day-Lewis, was an Irish-born British poet and Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972. He also wrote mystery stories under the pseudonym of Nicholas Bla ...

, writing as Nicholas Blake in '' The Spectator'' noting "Some attempt is made to establish the character of the victim, but the remaining dramatis personae are stuffed men".

Synopsis

Victor Harleston is apparently poisoned at the

breakfast Breakfast is the first meal of the day usually eaten in the morning. The word in English refers to breaking the fasting period of the previous night.Anderson, Heather Arndt (2013)''Breakfast: A History'' AltaMira Press. Various "typical" or "t ...

table after drinking a cup of coffee. Its connection to two other crimes are not at first established by the investigating

Scotland Yard Scotland Yard (officially New Scotland Yard) is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, the territorial police force responsible for policing Greater London's 32 boroughs, but not the City of London, the square mile that forms London's ...

officers and it falls to Professor Priestley to crack the case.

References

Bibliography

* Evans, Curtis. ''Masters of the "Humdrum" Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920-1961''. McFarland, 2014. * Herbert, Rosemary. ''Whodunit?: A Who's Who in Crime & Mystery Writing''. Oxford University Press, 2003. * Reilly, John M. ''Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers''. Springer, 2015. 1936 British novels Novels by Cecil Street British crime novels British mystery novels British thriller novels British detective novels Collins Crime Club books Novels set in London {{1930s-crime-novel-stub