Saturday, June 13, 2015

Crooked Herring - L.C. Tyler

Crooked Herring
L.C. Tyler
Felony & Mayhem, May 21 2015, $14.95
www.felonyandmayhem.com
ISBN 9781631940569

Crime writer Henry Holiday informs his friend novelist Ethelred Tressider that he remembers two things about New Year’s Eve.  First he was very drunk while making the rounds in Sussex with his equally intoxicated crime writer friend Crispin Vynall; and second he believes he killed his drinking buddy.  An upset Henry says his efforts to contact Crispin failed.

Calmly Ethelred asks where Vynall’s body is, but Henry insists he has no idea as to where he may have left the corpse.  Reluctantly Ethelred agrees to follow unobtrusively Henry’s holiday binge with much less emphasis on imbibing.  Leaving London, Ethelred’s literary agent domineering Elsie Thirkettle visits him and warns him not to get involved.


The fifth Ethelred and Elsie amateur sleuth (see The Herring in the Library and Herring on the Nile) is a very amusing investigation into what the protagonist expects to be Much Ado About Nothing.  Part of the jocularity comes from Elsie’s wry journal; while much more from Ethelred’s bumbling inquiry that has him in trouble with the law, and finally from the Amazon U.K. reviews of his novels.


Harriet Klausner

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