Blotto, Twinks and the Dead Dowager Duchess

February 6, 2012
Brett's second mystery set in 1920s England (after 2011's Blotto, Twinks and the Ex-King's Daughter) starts off as a passable Wodehouse imitation, but soon grows tiresome with its relentless wordplay, banter, and speech mannerisms evocative of Bertie Wooster (e.g., "Oh, trucky-trockle. Well, me old poached egg, tell me what your notion is zappity-ping"). The over-the-top plot finds the dim Honourable Devereux Lyminster (aka Blotto) and his brainy sister, Honoria (aka Twinks), investigating a murder that leads them to a sinister gang straight from the pulps, the League of the Crimson Hand. Wodehouse's genius lay in pairing memorably goofy characters with complex, rigorously constructed plots that maximized the farcical potential of misunderstandings and missteps. Brett's inability to do so renders this a slight diversion rather than a genuinely memorable comic mystery.

Starred review from January 1, 2012
In his first Blotto and Twinks novel, Brett upended the conventions of the country-house, body-found-in-the-library mystery, shaking out every one of its hoary traditions like so much loose change. In the second, Brett intensifies the satire and the action, delivering readers absolute barrages of wordplay and one-liners, which make this romp reminiscent of theatrical farces like The Importance of Being Earnest or You Can't Take It with You. The extremely privileged 1920s brother-sister pair of Blotto (the handsome, brainless scion of a wealthy family) and his sister, Twinks (drop-dead gorgeous and over-the-top brainy), once again embark on solving a mystery that drops into their laps. Blotto has been dreading an upcoming country-house party, with its inclusion of guests with dark secrets, a private detective, and, of course, a murdersure enough, the hostess herself, the Duchess of Melmont, is shortly dispatched in the garden with a pitchfork. Blotto and Twinks must defend the honor of the chief suspect, the family chauffeur, and are quickly caught up in a zany whirl that takes them through a London opium den all the way to a castle in the Highlands, as they trace the workings of the Crimson Hand (and find the owner of the Crimson Thumb, too). As in his other novels, Brett is a devastating social critic (he nicely skewers his upper-class characters' blithe acceptance of the suffering of the lower classes) and master of devastating physical characterization. This is the kind of book you'll have to put down, frequently, as you roar with laughter.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)