Publish and Be Murdered by
Ruth Dudley Edwards
hbk out May 98
Published by HarperCollins
at £15.99
The Wrangler is a venerable magazine which has pontificated on politics, economics and literature from a waspish right-wing viewpoint since the end of the eighteenth century. Though much respected, the magazine is a financial disaster, requiring frequent injections of cash from its philanthropic owner, Lord Papworth. The magazine is housed in Mayfair and clings to business practices that were obsolete in 1939. Worst of all are the extravagant expenses foisted on Lord Papworth by his editor, a snobbish, loathsome and quintessential young fogey named William Lambie Crump (a man who calls a taxi by its full name - a “taximeter cabriolet”). In desperation, Papworth hires the engaging and tactful Robert Amiss as the magazine’s business manager, hoping that he will be able to introduce some economies. Where Amiss is, Lady Troutbeck (the redoubtable mistress of St Martha’s College, Cambridge, and scourge of the House of Lords) cannot be far behind; and with the baroness comes Ptolemy, the cat the world loves to hate.
Amiss does indeed improve the finances of the ailing Wrangler. In the process, however, there are two murders, a wealth of low comedy, and some savagely effective political satire. Dudley Edwards appears to aim at a moribund magazine, but her real satirical target is the political and social framework that sustains it. Once again, she gives the Establishment the Ptolemy treatment it so richly deserves. The result should be required reading for Tony Blair and all British politicians.
This is a novel you read for the satire and the wit, rather than for the crimes and the detection. The storyline is often elbowed out of the way by a series of entertaining monologues - but who cares? Aficionados will note that Robert Amiss is in danger of turning into a three-dimensional character.
In a prefatory note, Ruth Dudley Edwards disclaims any resemblance between The Wrangler and The Economist (whose history she wrote). No doubt any resemblance between The Wrangler and The Spectator is also entirely coincidental.
(
Andrew Taylor
- author of the highly acclaimed Roth & Lydmouth Series)
Publish and Be Murdered by
Ruth Dudley Edwards