Synopsis
The British fondness for tradition is no secret, but some members of London's ffeatherstonehaugh's club (pronounced "Fanshaw," naturally) seem to be taking things a bit too far, bumping off officers of the club who threaten their ordered, if highly eccentric, way of life. After the club secretary allegedly jumps to his death from the club's gallery, Robert Amiss, conveniently unemployed at the moment, agrees to help his friends at the Police Department get to the bottom of things. Hiring on as a club waiter, Amiss finds himself caught up in a bizarre caricature of a club, run by and for debauched geriatrics, with skeletons rattling in every closet. The portraits are of roues, the library houses erotic literature, and the servants are treated like Victorian lackeys - on a good day.
Why are there so few members? How are they financed? Will Amiss keep his job - and his cover - despite the enmity of the ferocious, snuff-covered Colonel Flagg? The answers lie in this ingenious, uproarious mystery that will keep you guessing - and laughing - until the very end.
Reviews
This low-key whodunit set in a London club shows members dropping out of the old-boy network in decidedly unusual ways. Ruled by the memory of lascivious poet, bon vivant and womanizer John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, whose verse appears throughout the narrative, the ffeatherstonehaugh (pronounced "Fanshaw") club is appalled when its secretary, Trueman, falls from an upper story to his death in the saloon. The police deem the death a suicide at first, but keep the case open and install Robert Amiss, friend of CID Sgt. Pooley (both last seen in The School of English Murder ) as a waiter and spy. Robert finds almost everything amiss at the social sanctuary--from resident members' dining sumptuously at little expense to the suspected selling off of rare wine. The chairman of the club vows to bring about radical change, only to be dynamited at his first committee meeting. Edwards's accurate portraits of the people and mores in English men's clubs, coupled with her deliciously dry sense of humor, make for a procedural that is short on suspense but long on entertainment.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Presently unemployed, his girlfriend in India, Robert Amiss has agreed once again to go undercover for his Scotland Yard pals- -Detective Superintendent Jim Milton and Sergeant Ellis Pooley (The English School of Murder, 1990, etc.)--this time hiring on as a waiter in London's private ffeatherstonehaugh (pronounced ``Fanshaw'') club: Its newly appointed secretary has fallen to his death on the premises, and the suicide verdict has left Milton dissatisfied. Robert's secret probing turns up some very questionable practices in a club once prosperous and characterized by its raffishness, now almost the private preserve of five elderly members who don't take kindly to suggestions of change. There are two more deaths--definitely murders--before a lot of research and some inspiration on Robert's part solve a stubborn puzzle. The plot is bizarre but psychologically convincing--add to it a vivid cast of characters, from bullying, snuff-covered Colonel Flagg and old but still active rou‚ Fishbane to kitchen manager Gooseneck and his lover, the young Indian waiter-student Sunil. The writer's style is robust, witty, ironic and literate. All in all, a delicious romp. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Choice prose, cutting wit, and memorable characters distinguish this traditional British mystery. Sergeant Pooley enlists the aid of his otherwise unemployed friend Robert Amiss to help investigate a suspicious death at an old and infamous London club. There Robert observes a coterie of elderly eccentrics, who, coddled and catered to, openly oppose new management, yet seem incapable of murder--until hidden dynamite kills the new club president. Well-plotted, smooth-flowing, and highly satisfying.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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