Blotto, Twinks and the Bootlegger's Moll - Hardcover

Simon Brett worked as a producer in radio and television before taking up writing full-time. He is the author of the much-loved Fethering mysteries, Charles Paris series and the Mrs Pargeter novels. In 2014 he was awarded the Crime Writers' Association's prestigious Diamond Dagger for sustained excellence and contribution to crime writing, and in 2016 was awarded an OBE for his services to literature. He lives in an Agatha Christie-style village in the South Downs.

Simon Brett worked as a producer in radio and television before taking up writing full-time. He is the author of the much-loved Fethering mysteries, Charles Paris series and the Mrs Pargeter novels. In 2014 he was awarded the Crime Writers' Association's prestigious Diamond Dagger for sustained excellence and contribution to crime writing, and in 2016 was awarded an OBE for his services to literature. He lives in an Agatha Christie-style village in the South Downs.

*Starred Review* P. G. Wodehouse meets Upton Sinclair meets Perils of Pauline in Brett’s latest 1920s romp. In this, the fourth in the Blotto and Twinks series, the hunky and hopelessly dim Blotto and his gorgeous and scarily brilliant sister, Twinks, transport themselves from the family’s stately British home, Tawcester Towers, to Chicago during the throes of Prohibition. The family is in throes themselves; Blotto and Twinks’ mother, the Dowager Duchess, has declared that only an enormous injection of money can solve the estate’s current disrepair—and steady streams of that green currency should be acquired from an advantageous marriage to an American. Enter a Chicago meatpacking magnate and Blotto’s engagement to his daughter. Once the unhappy pair of Blotto and Twinks arrive in Chicago, touring the stockyards and witnessing the assembly-line killing operation, their determination to end Blotto’s fate of joining this Chicago family business intensifies. Since this is Blotto and Twinks, the mood soon lifts, and we’re treated to a series of comic schemes that is heightened by Blotto’s blankness about what’s going on—his point of view during a speakeasy scene in which he believes the bootlegger’s protestation that he shoots only public enemies (about five during dinner, at point blank) is incredibly well done. This is not so much a mystery as it is a single protracted comic chase scene. The climax, set on the killing floors of the stockyards, is stop-laughing-and-start-clawing-at-the-armchair exciting. --Connie Fletcher