Book description
When the chairperson of the prestigious Knapper-Warburton Literary
Prize dies in suspicious circumstances, Robert Amiss (the token sane
member of the judging panel) wastes no time in summoning Baroness “Jack”
Troutbeck to step into the chair. Speculation that a killer may be
targeting the judges worries the baroness not in the slightest-it's the
prospect of immersing herself in modern literature that fills her with
dread. But noblesse must oblige, even when it means joining the ranks of
the superciliati sitting in judgement of the literati. With the baroness
at the helm, the judges resume the task of whittling away at the
short-list. But the killer, too, has resumed work and is whittling away
at the judges one by one…. In deplorable taste and wickedly funny, this,
the tenth in the Robert Amiss series, will consolidate the author's
reputation for scurrilous humor. In her 10th comic Robert Amiss
mystery, Dudley Edwards (The Anglo-Irish Murders) mercilessly skewers
the book publishing world. The poisoning death of a peer, who served as
the chairperson for the eccentric selection committee for a new British
literary prize to outshine the Booker, causes a crisis. Panel member
Amiss, an aspiring mystery novelist, recruits his friend, Baroness Jack
Troutbeck, to fill the breach. The baroness, a politically incorrect
bisexual who might remind some readers of John Dickson Carr's legendary
Sir Henry Merrivale, quickly moves to impose her view that literature
should be judged on its literary merits, steamrollering over her
outraged colleagues who award points to entries based on the author's
ethnic, economic and political backgrounds. As one judge after another
meets an untimely end, the police place the remaining panel members
under guard. Edwards is unabashedly cynical about publishing and the
methods authors use to get ahead. The byplay between the baroness and
her rivals is often amusing, though less acidly memorable than Robert
Barnard's dialogue in works like Death of an Old Goat, which satirized
academic politics. Those interested in solving the puzzle should be
forewarned that there's no rational basis for anyone to deduce the
identity of the killer, who ultimately mails a confession to the police.
Dr Ruth Dudley Edwards was born and brought up in Dublin, Ireland. Since
she graduated she has lived in England, where she has been a teacher, a
Cambridge postgraduate student, a marketing executive, a civil servant
and, finally, a freelance writer, journalist and broadcaster. An
historian and prize-winning biographer, her recent non-fiction includes
the authorized history of The Economist, a portrait of the British
Foreign Office and a book about the newspaper world of the mid-twentieth
century. She uses her knowledge of the British establishment in her
satirical crime novels: targets so far include the civil service,
gentlemen's clubs, Cambridge colleges, the House of Lords, the Church of
England, publishing, literary prizes and - always - political
correctness. She has three times been short-listed for awards from the
Crime Writers' Association. www. ruthdudleyedwards. com
