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Eats, Shoots and Leaves
Oct. 2nd, 2018 08:36 pmBook Review: A Shot in the Dark, by Lynne Truss
The ex-work book sale leaves a long legacy. This is the kind of book I probably wouldn't have discovered or been tempted by otherwise. I recognised the author; I read a borrowed copy of Eats, Shoots and Leaves some years ago, but I hadn't realised she had turned to fiction.
I can't really place my finger on it, but I don't think this book starts very well, which is a shame, because by the end I did enjoy it. It may be that it just takes some time to get going, or it may be that Truss is in the habit of going back and forth in time, and it isn't clear whether that is in the book's fact (in which case it's a self-spoiler), or in a character's imagination. On the other hand, there is some clever word play. Obviously, the title suggests a play on the Inspector Clouseau film of the same name, but really, the only common thread is that it's a crime comedy. The book opens with an account of "The Middle Street Massacre", an event in 1951 in which all of Brighton's underworld murdered each other while the local police, under the command of Inspector Steine, ate ice cream. This was turned into a film and made Steine a household name with his own programme on the Home Service. Unfortunately, he is not in fact the genius he's made out to be, and six years later Constable Twitten, fresh from the Police College at Hendon, starts making awkward observations. The very same day, a theatre critic comes down from London to review what he is sure will be an awful "modern" play; but A S Crystal is shot dead during the performance. This is inconvenient for Steine, who believes serious crime has vanished from Brighton. The solving of the case proves tricky, for different reasons, for all the characters.
As I started out, I felt that some of the seaside characters sounded like grotesques from The League of Gentlemen, but as the book progressed, I leaned more towards an Ealing Comedy interpretation, with bumbling poliecemen, bank robberies, char-ladies, and a chunk of ire for Graham Greene's Brighton Rock; in fact the book turns out to be based on a BBC Radio 4 comedy by Truss, of which I hadn't heard. Certainly the book stands on its own.
The ex-work book sale leaves a long legacy. This is the kind of book I probably wouldn't have discovered or been tempted by otherwise. I recognised the author; I read a borrowed copy of Eats, Shoots and Leaves some years ago, but I hadn't realised she had turned to fiction.
I can't really place my finger on it, but I don't think this book starts very well, which is a shame, because by the end I did enjoy it. It may be that it just takes some time to get going, or it may be that Truss is in the habit of going back and forth in time, and it isn't clear whether that is in the book's fact (in which case it's a self-spoiler), or in a character's imagination. On the other hand, there is some clever word play. Obviously, the title suggests a play on the Inspector Clouseau film of the same name, but really, the only common thread is that it's a crime comedy. The book opens with an account of "The Middle Street Massacre", an event in 1951 in which all of Brighton's underworld murdered each other while the local police, under the command of Inspector Steine, ate ice cream. This was turned into a film and made Steine a household name with his own programme on the Home Service. Unfortunately, he is not in fact the genius he's made out to be, and six years later Constable Twitten, fresh from the Police College at Hendon, starts making awkward observations. The very same day, a theatre critic comes down from London to review what he is sure will be an awful "modern" play; but A S Crystal is shot dead during the performance. This is inconvenient for Steine, who believes serious crime has vanished from Brighton. The solving of the case proves tricky, for different reasons, for all the characters.
As I started out, I felt that some of the seaside characters sounded like grotesques from The League of Gentlemen, but as the book progressed, I leaned more towards an Ealing Comedy interpretation, with bumbling poliecemen, bank robberies, char-ladies, and a chunk of ire for Graham Greene's Brighton Rock; in fact the book turns out to be based on a BBC Radio 4 comedy by Truss, of which I hadn't heard. Certainly the book stands on its own.