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Author: Simon Brett, 2012.
Genre: Cozy Mystery. Parody. Period Fiction 1920s.
Other Details: Hardback. 202 pages. Unabridged audio edition (5 hrs, 55 mins). Read by Simon Brett.
Another hair-raising adventure featuring the aristocratic brother and sister sleuthing duo! Due to financial hardships at Tawcester Towers, the Dowager Duchess has decreed that the only way the family fortunes can be restored is to marry Blotto off... to an American! So begins the fourth adventure in the Blotto and Twinks series, and this time the aristocratic sleuthing siblings end up being transported across the Pond to the gangster-ridden hell-hole that is Prohibition Chicago.
Reluctantly, Blotto and Twinks set sail on ocean liner S/S His Majesty. He feels like a condemned man as awaiting him in Illinois is fabulously wealthy heiress Mary Chapstick, the only daughter of meat-packing magnate Hiram P. Chapstick III. But it's Twinks who discovers early on that all is not as it seems and that Hiram P. Chapstick III is in fact up to his neck in a bootlegging operation run by the notorious Chicago mobster, Spagsy Chiaparelli. - from inside front cover blurb.
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I loved this as I have all the Blotto & Twinks books and here Brett does a wonderful job of sending up Prohibition-era USA. It's not just Golden Age detective tropes or Americans that come under fire as he also is quite scathing in his portrayal of the British upper class and there isn't the nostalgia of Downton Abbey.
This was a short novel and I so love Simon Brett's reading of his own work that I both listened to the audio book as well as read the print edition.
