Book description
Life in a dismal bureaucratic cul-de-sac is not what Robert Amiss
expects when the British civil service lends him for a year to the
British Conservation Corporation. In fact, he finds himself condemned to
a non-job in a backwater, managing disgruntled and demoralized
time-servers who deeply resent him. Morale is not improved by the
arrival of Melissa, a radical feminist lesbian separatist. Only Amiss's
sense of humour and the joys of visiting Rachel, his new love in Paris,
keep him sane. The malice, envy and anger that burgeons among the filing
cabinets is first expressed in pettiness and then in unpleasant
practical jokes. Then it escalates and finally culminates in callous
murder by means of boxes of poisoned chocolates sent to the bureaucrats'
wives. With the help of Ellis Pooley, a young detective obsessed with
fictional sleuths, Amiss and his friend, Superintendent Milton, search
for motives in an office where marital discord and broken dreams might
drive anyone to murder. 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
