Lumina Flower is a new novelist who fears she may have inadvertently libelled Lotte Liselotte, a German actress from the silent film days. She heads off to a bathing resort on the island of Lyonesse to try and charm her victim. Lumina is followed by Andrew Adams, her publisher, who wants to protect his interests. Andrew is followed by his wife, Ashe, who wants to protect hers. Their small son Benjy tags along. Already present are Professor Mandrake, a television presenter; a Scots widower, his fiancee and his recalcitrant daughter, some East London urchins on a taxpayer-funded holiday and their minder, assorted waiters and hotel staff. When Lotte is strangled and buried on the beach there are plenty of suspects.
This is the epitome of what I have come to regard as a Penguin Mystery. It's witty, amusing and literate -- there are quotes from people like Kipling and Ogden Nash at the start of each chapter. The characters are eloquent and entertaining. The children are drawn realistically and with charm. The comedy of manners proceeds with a vivacity that Jane Austen would have been proud of.
And it goes on. And on. And on. And by the time we get four-fifths of the way through the book, with the murder still undone, it's become clear that any detective content will be brief and perfunctory, crammed in at the end to fill the requirements of the genre. And so it proves. Professor Mandrake does the honours, for what it's worth, though Ashe is in there at the end with him. But this is really a detective story in name only.
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