The Rasp is a whodunit

Whodunit

A whodunit or whodunnit is a complex, plot-driven variety of the detective story in which the puzzle is the main feature of interest. The reader or viewer is provided with clues from which the identity of the perpetrator of the crime may be deduced before the solution is revealed in the final...

 mystery novel by Philip MacDonald

Philip MacDonald

Philip MacDonald was an English author of thrillers.-Life and work:...

. It was published in 1924 and introduces his series character, detective Colonel Anthony Gethryn

Anthony Gethryn

Anthony Ruthven Gethryn is character depicted in novels by Philip MacDonald and their cinematic counterparts.-History:Gethryn is the series detective for more than a dozen of Philip MacDonald's murder mysteries, written between 1924 and 1956....

. It is set in a country house in rural England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.

Plot summary

Anthony Gethryn, ex-secret service agent, is an occasional "special correspondent" for a weekly newspaper and is assigned to cover the story when a cabinet minister, John Hoode, is found murdered in the library at his country house, battered to death with a wood-rasp. Gethryn recalls his acquaintance with a member of the household and is thus invited to investigate the crime as a kind of "friend of the family". It soon seems as though everyone concerned has a cast-iron alibi for the time of the crime, but Gethryn comes up with an imaginative way for the murderer to have accomplished the deed and established an alibi, and reveals the murderer.

Literary significance & criticism

Anthony Gethryn is an early example of the amateur detective, the idea of which was soon to become popular in detective fiction. The focus on the breaking of an elaborate alibi is similar to the work of Freeman Wills Crofts

Freeman Wills Crofts

Freeman Wills Crofts was an Irish mystery author, one of the 'Big Four' of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.-Birth and education:Crofts was born at 26 Waterloo Road, Dublin, Ireland...

, MacDonald's contemporary. "The story is the conventional body-in-the-study, with a fair amount of obvious detection. ... The killer's fakery is plain from the start. Despite all this, it has several times been declared "a classic" and "epochmaking" by students of the genre."

Film

The story was made into a film with a screenplay by Philip MacDonald which was directed by Michael Powell

Michael Powell (director)

Michael Latham Powell was a renowned English film director, celebrated for his partnership with Emeric Pressburger...

 in 1932. It starred Claude Horton as Gethryn but is now missing, believed lost.