Written by Dorothy L. Sayers with Robert Eustace, The Documents in the Case is an ingenious epistolary novel and dossier mystery told through letters, witness statements, newspaper reports, and other evidence assembled by the victim’s son. With multiple unreliable perspectives, an adulterous affair, psychological suspense, and forensic science, this intricately constructed poisoning mystery challenges readers to determine whether an apparently accidental death was actually a near-perfect crime.

A suspicious death. A forbidden affair. A murderer betrayed by science.

When sardonic aspiring novelist John Munting rents a London flat with a volatile young artist, he soon becomes entangled in the troubled household downstairs. Their respectable landlord has married a beautiful younger spouse, and beneath the surface of their domestic life, jealousy, deception, and illicit passion are taking root.

Months later, the landlord is found dead at a remote country cottage, apparently poisoned after mistakenly eating deadly mushrooms—but he was an expert in wild fungi. His grieving son refuses to believe the death was an accident, drawing Munting into the investigation as a reluctant collaborator. His dry wit, sharp social observations, and fallible judgments bring the suspects vividly to life as the truth emerges from private correspondence, conflicting testimony, newspaper reports, and an extraordinary piece of forensic evidence.

A fascinating departure from Sayers’s celebrated Lord Peter Wimsey series, this standalone Golden Age detective novel is perfect for fans of Agatha Christie’s Ariadne Oliver mysteries and Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, as well as readers who enjoy scientific puzzles, clever British howdunits, unconventional narrative structures, amateur sleuths, and murder mysteries told through letters and documents. Ideal for libraries, book clubs, and collectors of vintage crime fiction.