Tickle Your Funny Bone with this Tale
While I’m not getting back to them as quickly as I’d like, I am making my way through the Anty Boisjoly Mysteries. These are books to pick up when you are ready to laugh while working on a locked room mystery, and The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine is no exception.
Anty is a young man in 1920’s England. He’s upper class, so he has little more to do with his time than visit his gentlemen’s club. And that’s where he runs into his friend Lager Tenpenny on the day this story starts. It seems that two of Lager’s relatives have just killed each other in a duel. But there’s a family tontine on the line. Essentially, it’s a trust that is set to expire, but they need to know who died first so they know which branch of the Tenpenny family gets it. Anty is gaining a reputation for solving particularly puzzling problems, and so Lager wants his help figuring things out.
When Anty inspects the scene, he determines that it was murder. Inside a locked room. But who is the killer? And how did they get out of the room?
This is a pretty puzzling locked room mystery. I found the story compelling with enough forward movement and twists to keep me engaged. We do follow a couple of rabbit trails, but they are fun. The solution, when we reach it, is completely logical not only with the who but also the why and the how.
But these books are just as funny as they are mysterious. They are filled with banter, quick wit, and sarcasm. I laughed out loud many times, starting with the first page, and grinned plenty more.
The unfortunate side effect is that this makes the characters a little thin. They all tend to sound the same. They have enough distinction to make us care about who done it and to help us keep them straight, but these are not going to be the deep characters who draw you into the story.
But they don’t have to be. These books are designed to be an homage to authors like P.G. Wodehouse or Oscar Wilde. It’s filled with that dry wit and, I’ll say it again, sarcasm. And I do mean filled.
Basically, this is a case of knowing what you are in the mood for when you pick up a book. If you want something dark or realistic, look elsewhere. But when you are looking for something light and funny with a good plot holding it together, this series is just what you need.
Given what I said about characters, it’s no surprise that you can read the books in any order. While there are a couple of references to the first two books in the series, there’s nothing spoiler related. And there are so few returning characters, you’ll get what you need to know about their relationships from this book.
When you are ready to laugh, pick up an Anty book. Whether it’s The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine or another book that catches your fancy, you’ll be glad you did.
Laugh your way through the rest of the Anty Boisjoly Mysteries.
Tontine is a famous brand of pillow here in Australia! Glad you explained what this was in the context of this book!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your review with the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge