Witty, Wacky, and Wry: I'm LOL at Simon Brett's Blotto and Twinks Mysteries
As I’ve mentioned before in this newsletter, I’m a big Simon Brett fan. His Mrs. Pargeter series is one of my all-time favorites.
I’ve just discovered Blotto and Twinks. I’ve not read the first in series yet (that would be Blotto, Twinks, and the Ex-King’s Daughter), but I’m laughing myself silly over #2, titled, Blotto, Twinks, and the Dead Dowager Duchess.
If there’s any aspect of the English country house mystery, the divine rights of upper-class Brits to look down on their inferiors, sporting tropes, amateur sleuths and their less intelligent sidekicks, and incomprehensible upper-class public school slang that Brett doesn’t completely skewer, I haven’t found it.
I found myself laughing out loud, frequently, as I read. Consider this, for example:
The Dowager Duchess had been with Pansy Melmont at one of those convent schools where girls of the right sort are taught to talk very loudly, wear tweed and sneer at their inferiors.
Or this, from the point of view of Twinks, whose beauty inspires all men to fall at her feet, and who, among her other accomplishments, speaks 37 languages fluently:
She knew that the ideal aspired to in the world of amateur sleuthdom demanded a wide discrepancy between the intellectual capacity of investigator and sidekick. Twinks and Holofernes were too similar in their gifts, whereas with Blotto at her side she had never had any difficulty in achieving that ideal.
Or how about this description of political philosophy:
‘It started, like so many pernicious new ideas, in the late 1840s. There had been other groups promoting the evil concept of equality for all before that time, but none of them had caused any major disruption.’
‘Erm, Razzy old fruitcake,’ Twinks interposed, ‘wouldn’t you call the French Revolution a major disruption?’
‘Oh, that doesn’t count.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because the people behind it were French, of course.’ Which seemed to end the argument as far as the Professor was concerned.
Or how about this dig at Sherlock Holmes:
Professor Erasmus Holofernes took it from her and turned it over in his hands. ‘An opium pipe. Of Chinese manufacture.’ He sniffed the ceramic bowl. ‘Last smoked at ten seventeen on Saturday morning.’
It even (or maybe especially) pokes fun at the English country-house mystery. It opens with Blotto bemoaning the upcoming house party his formidable mother was forcing him to attend.
If there was one thing Blotto (properly known as the Honourable Devereux Lyminster) didn’t like about weekend house parties, it was the inevitable gathering together of a large number of people with dark secrets in their past, along with the tiresome near-certainty that one of them would get murdered. Not to mention the unavoidable presence of a know-it-all polymathic amateur sleuth who would happen to be staying for the weekend. And the obligatory moment when the aforementioned know-it-all polymathic amateur sleuth would dragoon everyone into the library to tell them whodunit.
Naturally, the inevitable murder occurs, and the aforementioned kow-it-all polymathic amateur sleuth gathers everyone in the library to announce his deductions. Unfortunately, they’re completely wrong, so Blotto and his sister Twinks (Lady Honoria Lyminster) have to solve it.
In the course of crime solving, there’s hardly a trope left unsatirized. Trains, planes, and automobiles, check. The English obsession with cricket, check. The romantic hero, check. Evil mastermind, check. You get the idea.
If you’re looking for something that’s politically correct, with no misogyny, casual racism, and class divisions, don’t read this book. Otherwise enjoy the over-the-top satire for what it is, because it’s rendered masterfully. I’m looking forward to starting the series at the beginning.
What I’m Reading
Lady Rample and the Lady in the Lake by Shea MacLeod
Besides Blotto and Twinks, I’ve recently zipped through the latest in Shea McLeod’s Lady Rample and the Lady in the Lake. It’s an entertaining quick read, twelfth in her Lady Rample series.
This story finds Ophelia, Lady Rample, and her Aunt Butty, on vacation, renting a cottage (in the same sense that the dwellings in Newport, Rhode Island are cottages) in the Lake District.
They arrive to find the little village a hotbed of intrigue as two rival bakers wage war over which one has the original Ravensmere gingerbread recipe. It’s all fun and games, not to mention lots of yummy gingerbread, until one of the bakery employees is found murdered.
There’s the occasional verbal awkwardness, which I don’t like stumbling over. For example:
It was something I’d learned quickly after I’d taken over my belated husband’s companies. . .
- Lady Rample and the Lady in the Lake by Shea MacLeod
Oops. . . you send someone a belated birthday card if you’ve missed the actual date. If your husband is deceased, you’ve taken over your late husband’s companies. . .
Other than a few of those, it’s a delightful little book.
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Murder in the Alps by Sarah Rossett
This is the eight in the Olive Belgrave series, which I’ve very much enjoyed. Set in the 1920s, Olive and her friends are off to St. Moritz to enjoy Switzerland’s winter sports. But of course, nothing Olive undertakes is ever that simple.
On the train, she meets a supercilious member of the aristocracy, who wants to hire Olive to find out who’s sending her blackmail letters. But the woman is too high handed and wants to tell Olive how to do her job, so Olive declines.
A few evenings later, the woman turns up dead and when Olive starts investigating she finds most of her friends couldn’t stand her and would have liked to be rid of her.
Olive has way too many suspects, but in the end she narrows it down and comes up with the right answer.