September 1, 2019
Grammarian Truss (Eats, Shoots & Leaves) continues her foray into crime fiction with the follow-up to A Shot in the Dark. Last year's title introduced Constable Twitten of the Brighton police force, his Inspector, Steine, and their charwoman, Mrs. Groyne, who is always ready to listen and bring tea and cake. This second book has a cast of Brighton denizens--tourists, citizens, law enforcement officers, and all manner of class types who go about their summertime activities in 1957--until a body is found. Great attention to details of the period and the various conflicts between the social classes is lavished on the setting and characters, citing the real article "U and Non-U" published by a linguist about this time, which distinguishes vocabulary between the upper and middle classes. This plays into the plot. The author's flair for language adds to the book, as do the colorful "extras," including the Brighton Belles (pretty young women who act as goodwill ambassadors), the musicians who perform at a local venue, a humbug seller, and horrendously fake waxwork parlor shopkeepers. VERDICT The precise wordplay and convoluted crime plot of this 1950s British blackish comedy will please fans and attract more readers to the series.--Mary K. Bird-Guilliams, Chicago
Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
September 1, 2019
It's 1957, and the seaside resort of Brighton, England, is awash in sunburned toddlers, sticky candy, and saucy postcards. Adding to the festive air are the Brighton Belles, young ladies who patrol in well-heeled pairs offering help to tourists. It's all very jolly until one of the Belles finds a man dead on the beach, launching a new case for Truss' protagonists, Constable Twitten, Inspector Steine, and Sergeant Brunswick, who first appeared in A Shot in the Dark, 2018. This character-driven investigation includes delightfully batty characters and situations?Steine, for example, has been offered the rare chance to have a waxwork made of himself for a tawdry museum. Another character is desperate to give away gold bars he inherited, but everyone he tries smells a scam. In the middle is the police station's charlady, who is actually a seasoned criminal. Like A Shot in the Dark, this is fast moving and takes close reading to keep up with, but it's worth it. Give to Truss' fans as well as those who enjoy Christopher Fowler's Bryant and May mysteries.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)
August 19, 2019
Truss’s comic mystery debut, 2018’s A Shot in the Dark, concluded with Constable Peregrine Twitten, of the Brighton, England, police force, discovering that the mastermind orchestrating organized crime in that seaside resort was none other than Mrs. Groynes, the police department’s unassuming charlady. In this delightful sequel, also set in 1957, Twitten has been unable to persuade anyone else of that truth. His duel with Groynes and continued efforts to get his dim superior, Insp. Geoffrey Steine, to see the light serve as backdrop to his inquiry into the throat-slitting of 17-year-old Peter Dupont, a junior clerk in the Sewerage and Waterworks Department. By chance, Twitten previously eavesdropped on a cryptic conversation the victim had about running away with his girlfriend, Deirdre Benson; during that talk, Peter warned Deirdre that their plans must be kept secret from her violent family, which she claimed were responsible for killing “Uncle Ken” and leaving part of his body in a trunk at the train station. Twitten’s dogged sleuthing and Steine’s unrelenting idiocy build toward a surprising but logical reveal. Truss perfectly blends humor and detection. Agent: Anthony Goff, David Higham Assoc. (U.K.).
August 15, 2019
Criminal conspiracy doesn't rain in 1957 Brighton: It pours. Waiting on a staircase inside the Maison du Wax for blind sculptor Pierre Tussard and his daughter and assistant, Ang�lique, to finish preliminary measurements of Brighton Constabulary wireless star Inspector Geoffrey St John Steine, their latest model, Constable Peregrine Twitten overhears two teenagers whispering how much they'd love to run away together and how careful they have to be around the people who cut off Uncle Ken's head. Laboring to remember all the proper names the couple dropped--Blackmore, Hoagland, Dickie--Twitten has no clue that he's stumbled onto the tip of a very large and felonious iceberg. Further enlightenment arrives, along with further mystification, when Peter Dupont, the neophyte town council clerk Twitten overheard, is found with his throat cut, and his girlfriend turns out to be Deirdre Benson, whose brothers, Frank and Bruce, along with their mother, run a profitable family crime syndicate out of the Black Cat club. And there's more. Veteran con artist Joseph "Wall-Eye" Marriott accosts Adelaide Vine and her friend Phyllis, a pair of Brighton Belles given the job of helping strangers; then he pretends to be Lord Melamine Colchester and offers to sell them gold at the bargain price of 25 pounds a brick--that is, unless it really is the Marquess of Colchester and those bricks really are gold. Dickie George, a lounge singer at the Black Cat, emerges from a week in the Brighton sewers only to be struck dead by a giant piece of candy. And Palmeira Groynes is ready to execute any number of foul schemes that Twitten could foil if only he could persuade Inspector Steine that the constabulary's charlady was the evil genius he's recognized as such ever since A Shot in the Dark (2018). Truss' period burlesque extends from individual character types and obligatory scenes to the longer narrative arcs beloved of more recent franchises. Too relentlessly facetious to take seriously but more frantic than funny.
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