Blotto, Twinks and the Bootlegger's Moll

Starred review from February 15, 2014
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 disrepairand 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 onhis 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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)