A Shot in the Dark: A Twitten Mystery (A Constable Twitten Mystery)

Product Information

I always seem to have this trouble with Truss's novels. Her writing is excellent, but her sense of humour just doesn't quite align with mine. Her main comedy trope is extreme and eccentric characters. And I just don't find that sort of thing funny. For my taste, if you want to be funny, you have to be funny, not just set up a row of grotesques, bump them into each other and expect us to laugh. Her style and humour can feel a bit like a Punch and Judy show in places ... appropriately enough for the setting, in this case. There is a murder, a con man, and a criminal mastermind in Brighton, a beach town on the English coast in1957. Only young Constable Twitten has a chance to solve the crime if his bungling co-workers don’t stop him.

All is not well in Brighton. Inspector Steine has a criminally insane murderer of policemen after him, a visiting professor has been murdered at a department store, and worse, Mrs Groynes, charlady and gang leader, has been booted from the police department by the new police secretary. The book is light, smart and very witty. I half guessed the main culprit about half way through and thought I must be wrong because it was so unlikely! The characters are like those you might find in an Agatha Christie novel and in fact the whole book reads that way except it is based in the police station rather than a country house. I am a fan of droll, and I also appreciate a well-executed send-up. This, however, somehow manages to be clever but not fun, and that's more than mildly disappointing. Truss enjoys telling these stories. She drops in asides to the reader; "As the reader will have gathered, the opening of the zebra crossing at noon on Friday is destined to bring many strands of our narrative together." We are all in this together enjoying the fun. This book is utterly hilarious and made me laugh out loud quite a bit. The characters are endearing though rather bumbling - as the reader is told more or less from the beginning who the villains are, I did spend a lot of time wondering how the twain would meet! There were some really hilarious sequences and asides that I enjoyed, such as the relationship between the governor of Broadmoor and his 'Carlotta'.

Reviews

I read many British mysteries. But this series continues to confuse me with Briticisms and product names available only in England. Possibly only in the past. My Kindle dictionary doesn’t even know what they mean. I also don’t like or relate to the bumbling policemen. They have an office cleaner who is really a master criminal. Their chief didn’t notice he was being conned by the local wax museum. Reading The Man that got Away forces the reader to totally suspend disbelief. It's September in Brighton and the city is playing host to weeks of endless rain and lashings of villainy. Weedy Petey” is murdered and a bumbling group of keystone cops nearly prevents the only two people in the constabulary with brains from figuring out the whole mess.

Set in Britain, it could almost be a noir mystery given some of the dialogue, although there were plenty of corny characters that would have no place with the jaded cast of a true old time detective novel. There’s also the minor fact that the book is clearly meant to be laugh-out-loud funny, which it is. It’s a comedic mystery. The idea that the three victims had been killed by milk bottles is both equally funny and deeply horrific. Now, her firing also puts Twitten in a quandary as he alone knows her secret, and this makes him question what is the right thing to do. (Sorry, can’t tell you.)But, you know, it was there. I had to buy it or I wouldn't have remembered it existed until the next time I was annoyed by a greengrocer's apostrophe and I suddenly went 'wait, Lynne Truss ... didn't she write another novel? What on earth was it?' In the wake of two extremely high-profile murder cases, and with the summer of 1957 finally winding down, Constable Twitten is eagerly anticipating a quiet spell at work. But his hoped-for rest is interrupted when he and his colleagues find a trio of bodies, all murdered with the same unusual weapon: a milk bottle. Such a fun cosy read I just hope it's not the last we see of Constable Twitten and the rest of the Brighton force. The author has an unerring ear for dialogue and setting. The book really reads exactly like it was written contemporaneously for the time in which it's set. The pacing is superb and it moves along at a good clip. I never found my interest flagging. Ms. Truss has a deft touch with characterizations (she's been writing these characters for a while for audio plays, and it shows). There's a decidedly "keystone cops" element to the characterisations, with the lead policemen being naive and/or dim, whilst the criminal elements of Brighton attempt to exterminate one another with one of the chief underworld bosses actually working in the police department facility as a charwoman. By now the readers know that the cleaning lady in charge of the station is a criminal mastermind. Mrs. Groynes is part cleaner, part den mother, and part overlord, and she makes herself loved and indispensable by showing up with cake, providing constant cups of tea, and listening to the cops to make sure that her operation is nowhere close to being discovered. In the first of the series, Twitten discovers what Groynes has been up to, but not a single, solitary cop or civilian will believe him. He’s new, after all, and they’ve known Palmyra Groynes forever. Mrs. Groynes, a crime lord? Don’t be ridiculous!

A trusted member of a local gang has disappeared part way through planning a huge heist; a violent criminal obsessed with boiling the heads of policemen has escaped Broadmoor and is rumoured to be headed towards the city, while at Gosling's department store an American researcher has been found dead in the music section. DISCOVER THE AWARD-WINNING MURDER MYSTERY SERIES FROM SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR, PERFECT FOR FANS OF RICHARD OSMAN In her introduction, Truss mentions that this book, in addition to writing a police comedy serial for the BBC, she was hoping to gain membership in the Detection Club of London. In fact, that's really the whole purpose of this book ... to transform her BBC series and gain admittance to a club she reveres. Ah, such lofty goals. I should have known not to expect great care when she writes " A Shot in the Dark is set in 1957 ... Most of us weren't there, so I felt pretty free to make it up." the characters—there's the suggestion of something likeable in Twitten, but she insists on making him so bally annoying as well. It's hard to commit to a series when you're low key annoyed by everyone.

Publication Order of Constable Twitten Books

Brighton is sea-side resort with chip shops, night clubs, theaters and entertainment. Think an English Coney Island. Truss creates a whole alternative 1950s Brighton at the same time she captures the actual 1950s Brighton. The chief of police is a buffon who is considered a national hero. Organized crime has infiltrated the police in an hilarious way. Twitten is oblivious to much of the crookedness around him, but is smart enough to get in trouble. The Man That Got Away is an amusing crime thriller featuring the very delightful Constable Twitten. Set in Brighton in 1957, this is a work with a very intricately woven plot that keeps one engrossed till the very end. At the center of investigation are the owners of a local nightclub and Mrs Groynes, the charlady at the police station. While she is in everyone’s good books, Twitten knows that she is a criminal mastermind.