Carnage on the Committee by
Ruth Dudley Edwards
pbk out May 05
(HarperCollins)
at £6.99
Another in the series of very funny novels, the tenth featuring Robert Amiss,
usually the only normal person in the dramatis personae! Ruth Dudley
Edwards is Number One when it comes to satirical send-ups, with dialogue
that is continuously 'laugh-out-loud'.
The crime/mystery element is really only a peg on which to hang the
hilariously politically-incorrect text, as Ms Edwards says all the things we
would like to say about every exasperating aspect of Blair's New Britain.
In this book, she has a good go at the literary establishment, especially the
self-serving, affected and sometimes corrupt literati who man the Awards
Committees.
A prestigious prize, with a huge financial reward, is in the last stages of
consideration by an appointed committee, when the Chair-person is
murdered by ricin. In haste, the highly eccentric, but no-nonsense baroness
Troutbeck replaces her, a veteran of several previous novels. Known as
'Jack', she smokes a pipe, often has a parrot on her head, yet manages to be
Mistress of a Cambridge College.
The first panic is getting a 'long short-list' and the machinations of the weird
committee members to advance their pet choices are frustrated by Jack in
her inimitable fashion. Then two more of the committee are murdered, one
drowned in the Thames, the other gunned down in the street. Robert Amiss
and the serial detective DI Pooley labour away at the mystery, but the main
thrust of the story is the internecine warfare between the committee
members.
The satire and cynicism is uniformly spread among all shades of politics,
race, sex and religion and the book for once deserves the jacket plaudits such
as 'gloriously politically incorrect', 'entertaining and iconoclastic' and 'an
equal-opportunities satirist - she's rude to every persuasion'.
A very entertaining book indeed, but if it's a conventional crime mystery
you want, stick to PD James or Bernard Knight!
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
Carnage on the Committee by
Ruth Dudley Edwards
