Happy Diwali and Halloween to anyone celebrating either - fireworks are in full swing in Leicester, where I expect them to be going off into the small hours. My Halloween celebration was going to a Bloomsbury Raven showcase in the Gothic bar at the Saint Pancras hotel last night - it's a beautiful venue that I've never had an excuse to go into before and never quite wanted to go into alone.
One of the books in my goody bag was Your Guide To Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village and it seemed as good a way to pass the train journey home as any, and so it proved to be. It's not an easy book to define - a small humourous hardback that you can easily read in half an hour or so - the illustrations lift it into something more, but it's basically a stocking filler destined to live by a toilet (do people still have toilet books? They were kind of a feature of my childhood, lots of houses had them, but it feels like a vaguely unhygienic concept now).
Still, if you enjoy an Agatha Christie adaptation or have watched more than 2 episodes of Midsummer Murders this will make you laugh, it's family friendly and the illustrations keep the jokes fresh with details repeated readings/viewings will keep on revealing. It's a nicely silly Halloween read too so although there's not much to say about it, I'd still recommend this as one of the better quality examples of the genre and a bit of fun if you find yourself in a murderous mood.
I enjoyed this one for the same reasons you did, I think!
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