The Case of the Canterfell Codicil
Series: Anty Boisjoly Mystery, Book 1
By: PJ Fitzsimmons / Narrated By: Tim Bruce
Length: 5 hrs and 59 mins
BeYONd chucklesome; utterly delightful!
We’ve a few fellow Accomplices who stated a love of PG Wodehouse whenst they subscribed to the newsletter. With such glowing recommendations I, uh, uhm, wellll, finally? got around to listening to the man. Yeh yeh yeh and I’m not proud of m’self for getting to such a great age without listening to him earlier.
Oh wow! Where’d I been my entire life, head in the sand, or what?! Cuz Wodehouse is delightful!
So when I stumbled upon PJ Fitzsimmons and his Anty Boisjoly Mysteries, and they were quoted as being kinda sorta homages to Wodehouse’s style of writing? Dude, I was sooo there to chuck my $7.49 as the Whispersync pair to the Kindle Unlimited ebook (THEN you return the ebook, and huzzah! ya got a great audiobook in your Library forever and ever and ever, or at least until ya tick Audible/Amazon off…).
Anthony Boisjoly (ALWAYS mispronounced, no fault of his own) is knocking about at a Club, in between homes and Valets, seeing as his last Valet kinda sorta set his apartment on fire, tsk tsk. A telegram finds him, and he discovers that an Uncle of an old Eton/Oxford chum of his has been tossed off a building, where he met his end in an unfortunate SPLAT!
So it’s off to the countryside to help his old chum Fairfax, otherwise known as Fiddles. To start his journey off right, Anty makes sure to tell the fellow traveler next to him about the murder and about juuuuust how the police will botch the case. His companion? The Inspector assigned to the case. Oooooh, things already starting off on the worst foot possible.
Once at the sprawling Canterfell estate, Anty goes to great lengths to suss things out; he’s known as a Problem Solver amongst his cronies, usually settling matters of the heart and law, but this time he’s game for murder. He thinks out of the box, he tosses off beYONd intelligently quippy one-liners, usually of the hiLARiously observant and kinda sorta unkind ilk. And he just tries to get along with the denizens of the Castle, whether they be a rabble-rousing pro-proletariat scruffy Butler, an American who’s about as vapid and dense as they come (But who Fiddles is absolutely besotted with), a tippler of a Cook, or the cousin of Fiddles whom they always played pranks on. Oh, and there’s the patriarch of the Family who forever drones on about the British Empire and Her Wars, and there’s the grieving widow who kinda sorta hits the sauce, like from morning till night.
And then there’s Fiddles, who’s having a noose sized up for him by the very determined Inspector.
All this, the twists and turns in a plot that changes like sand sifting on a beach at high tide; the characters as they sip at their spirits, then sip again, then sip some more; the verrrry keen observations that are either thought wryly to the self, or are >gasp< SAID OUT LOUD (Sorry, Inspector!), is narrated oh so capably by Tim Bruce. Do I have more Tim Bruce in my Library? Well, one other, a History. Was his incredibly spot-on narration enough to drive me to get the second book in the Series? Oh absoLUTEly, esPECially as it’s Christmas-themed, and y’all know I’m a nut about the Holidays… and increasingly a nut about Mysteries, particularly if they’re cozies. So Bravo, Bruce: You made me adore Anty, and Gosh, did the bumbling Fiddles crack me up, or what?
What could be cozier than a group of the lazy and well-heeled as they knock back the brandy, even as a gunshot is heard as they dry out by a warm fire? What could be cozier than a goat on the loose? Maybe horseflies cleverly disguised as bees? What could be more enjoyable than Wodehouse-like Tongue Planted Firmly In Cheek writing? Blandings Castle but with DEATH? And more brandy?
Yup, I’m in this series for good!!!
Any time the husband wants to know why the heck I’m laughing whilst by myself, phone on lap, story swirling about m’ ears? THAT, fellow Accomplice, is a HIT!
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