The Sinking Admiral. Simon Brett

       Copyright

      Published by COLLINS CRIME CLUB

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by Collins Crime Club 2016

      Copyright © The Detection Club 2016

      Cover design by Bold&Noble.com © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008100438

      Ebook Edition © June 2016 ISBN: 9780008100445

      Version: 2016-04-27

       Dedication

       To the memory of P.D. James,

       a loyal member of The Detection Club,

       who had promised to

       write an introduction to this book –

       but was sadly prevented from doing so

      Table of Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       Introduction

       Chapter One

       Chapter Two

       Chapter Three

       Chapter Four

       Chapter Five

      

       Chapter Six

      

       Chapter Seven

      

       Chapter Eight

      

       Chapter Nine

      

       Chapter Ten

      

       Chapter Eleven

      

       Chapter Twelve

      

       Chapter Thirteen

      

       Chapter Fourteen

      

       Chapter Fifteen

      

       Chapter Sixteen

      

       Chapter Seventeen

      

       Chapter Eighteen

      

       Chapter Nineteen

      

       Chapter Twenty

      

       About the Contributors

      

       Also in This Series

      

       About the Publisher

       INTRODUCTION

      The Floating Admiral ‘by Certain Members of the Detection Club’ was published in 1931, fairly early into the association’s existence. The ‘Certain Members’ who produced that original collaborative novel were, in alphabetical order: Anthony Berkeley, G. K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie, G. D. H. and M. Cole, Freeman Wills Crofts, Clemence Dane, Edgar Jepson, Milward Kennedy, Ronald A. Knox, John Rhode, Dorothy L. Sayers, Henry Wade and Canon Victor L. Whitechurch. Since that time the novel has appeared in many foreign editions and been republished twice, by Macmillan in 1981 and by HarperCollins in 2011. The royalties deriving from the book have done much to defray the expenses of the events for which the Detection Club exists, three congenial dinners a year.

      Since I took over the Presidency in 2001 I have nurtured the desire to produce another volume ‘by Certain Members of the Detection