Publish and Be Murdered

Robert Amiss, lapsed civil servant, is approached by Lord Papworth, owner of the Wrangler, to step in as business manager for the august journal and do something about its steady drain on his lordship's finances. The magazine's editor, Willie Lambie Crump, and his staff are firmly mired in the 1950s, technologically speaking; ideologically, the journal has always been strongly conservative. Prodded by Baroness "Jack" Troutbeck, his rather menacing guardian angel, Amiss takes on the job and soon has his hands full trying to further the journal's progress toward the latter half of the 20th century without unduly upsetting the staff. When the political editor, Henry Potbury, is found dead under odd circumstances and Crump is murdered, Amiss discovers once again that trying to keep a job can be a lethal occupation.

Ruth Dudley Edwards is a historian and journalist as well as a mystery writer. The targets of her satirical crime novels include the gentlemen's clubs, Cambridge University, the House of Lords, journalism and literary prizes. The British Crime Writers' Association short-listed Corridors of Death for the John Creasy Award for best first novel, and Clubbed to Death and Ten Lords A-Leaping for their Last Laugh Award. She won the CrimeFest Last Laugh Award for Murdering Americans in 2008 and in 2010 the CWA Non-fiction Gold Dagger for Aftermath: the Omagh bombings and the families' pursuit of justice. Her twelfth mystery, Killing the Emperors, is a black comedy about conceptual art.