A review by ashleylm
Blotto, Twinks and the Dead Dowager Duchess by Simon Brett
3.0
Fun, silly, perfect for late night bedtime reading when my brain can't fully engage. (If I was rating the book with regards to that capacity, 5 stars! But I don't want to misleadingly put it in Middlemarch range, just because it's a fun light read.
I've been warned that these books are silly by my bookseller, but the author knows they are silly (which is quite a different feeling from unintentionally silly), and of course one's tolerance for intentional silliness varies. Some of it gets a bit wearying (the constant supposedly posh slang that I assume is entirely invented), but other bits were delightful (at one point, faced with quite a pickle of a cliffhanger, the author begins the next chapter with something like "after getting out of that, Blotto and Twinks continued on their way ..." (I'm paraphrasing) which I thought was perfect, an authorial equivalent of Indiana Jones' shooting his way out of a tense stand-off.
I was alarmed at some startling Chinese stereotyping, until it turned out it was actual Chinese stereotyping as a plot point in the book--hard to explain without spoilers, but it's fine once you realise what's happening.
And I'll happily read the next one. So a high 3 from me.
(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s).
I've been warned that these books are silly by my bookseller, but the author knows they are silly (which is quite a different feeling from unintentionally silly), and of course one's tolerance for intentional silliness varies. Some of it gets a bit wearying (the constant supposedly posh slang that I assume is entirely invented), but other bits were delightful (at one point, faced with quite a pickle of a cliffhanger, the author begins the next chapter with something like "after getting out of that, Blotto and Twinks continued on their way ..." (I'm paraphrasing) which I thought was perfect, an authorial equivalent of Indiana Jones' shooting his way out of a tense stand-off.
I was alarmed at some startling Chinese stereotyping, until it turned out it was actual Chinese stereotyping as a plot point in the book--hard to explain without spoilers, but it's fine once you realise what's happening.
And I'll happily read the next one. So a high 3 from me.
(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s).