Psycho by the sea

Truss, known for her wildly popular (and surprisingly witty) grammar book Eats, Shoots & Leaves, turned to crime fiction a few years ago, but she remains a delightfully original and quirky writer, as is clear in this latest in her Constable Twitten series, set in Brighton, England, in 1957. Twitten's boss, Inspector Steine, is being heralded as a hero for killing gang kingpin Terence Chambers. But while Steine is out of town, Twitten and his fellow officers face a challenging case involving the disappearance of a member of the gang that took over after Chambers' death. The gang's unlikely new leader, Mrs. Groynes, has disguised herself as a char lady at the police station, and her true identity is known only to the naïve Twitten, who knows she's a "bad 'un" but sees her as a friend whom he can't betray. So when Mrs Groynes' life is threatened by a mysterious figure with designs on becoming Brighton's new top gangster, Twitten feels obligated to solve the case. By turns wacky, violent, bizarre, and poignant, this madcap adventure shows human nature at its best and worst.

In British author Truss's clever, intricately plotted fourth Constable Twitten mystery, set in September 1957 a few weeks after the events of 2020's Murder by Milk Bottle, a lunatic named Geoffrey Chaucer, who murdered three policemen and boiled their severed heads, escapes from a psychiatric hospital and heads for Brighton. Could Inspector Steine, the head of the Brighton police, be his next target? A zealous new police secretary, who's been assigned to look after Inspector Steine, decides to fire Mrs. Groynes, the charlady at the Brighton police station who's actually a criminal mastermind. Despite Constable Peregrine Twitten's knowing Mrs. Groynes's secret, he can't help feeling sympathy for her after she's fired. Meanwhile, an American sociologist doing field studies gets murdered in the music department of Gosling's Department Store. Twitten, when he isn't boring people with his enthusiasm for The Hidden Persuaders, a real-life bestseller he's reading about marketing, eventually figures out a conspiracy's afoot to rob Gosling's. The complicated, often comic relationships among the principal characters provide much of the fun. Truss is unmatched in her ability to balance humor and crime. Agent: Anthony Goff, David Higham Assoc. (U.K.). (Nov.)

Truss's madcap follow-up to Murder by Milk Bottle is set in 1957 Brighton, on the coast of England, where gang members outnumber the cops. Brighton police inspector Steine has become a celebrated hero for nabbing the gang leader Terry Chambers, and gets a new secretary, Roberta Lennon, to assist him; she upsets the office balance by displacing Palmeira Groynes, the police station's charwoman-slash-local gangster. Meanwhile, at the Broadmoor psychiatric hospital, a new physician facilitates the release of a violent killer who targets and beheads police officers; and Mrs. Groynes is planning a Christmas-week heist at Gosling's Department Store, where Chambers associate Adelaide Vine has recently started a job. Constable Twitten's disastrous driving and Mrs. Groynes's stealthy maneuvers will bring all the action at Gosling's to a murderous conclusion. VERDICT Fans of Truss's series will be delighted by the elaborately plotted misadventures of the inept police officers and the women who manipulate them. The darkly humorous story will appeal to those who enjoy crime with comic overtones.--Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN

A fourth installment in the endless and lopsided battle between the forces of good and evil in 1957 Brighton. As Inspector Steine, who shot London gang lord Terence Chambers to death, is feted as a hero, Chambers' allies plot revenge. Within a few short days, Barrow-Boy Cecil, whose street trade in mechanical bunnies barely conceals his alliance with the local gang, goes missing; Len the Photographer is coshed during a burglary of his archives; psychopathic carpenter Geoffrey Chaucer, who has a history of beheading coppers, escapes from Broadmoor; Nicky Garroway, the Chambers henchman who helped him make his getaway, is murdered; and, worst of all, charlady Palmeira Groynes abruptly abandons her post in the Brighton Police Station. Constable Peregrine Twitten knows that Mrs. Groynes is the criminal mastermind behind every crime in Brighton, but he doesn't know that she's targeted Gosling's department store, whose owner, Harold Gosling, employs as his assistant Adelaide Vine, a criminal with a criminal family pedigree. As ex--Milk Girl Pandora Holden continues her hopeless pursuit of Twitten and Eliza Thorpe, Twitten's widowed landlady, sets her cap on his dim colleague Sgt. Jim Brunswick, Mrs. Groynes plots to kill Steine and knock over Gosling's in a heist that will make canny use of the store's state-of-the-art technology. Truss keeps the teapot simmering with baroque subplots, throwaway jests, and insinuations of further hidden relationships so amusing and disconnected that many readers will lose the thread of the main story. Not that there's anything wrong with that. As diverting and inconsequential as a Rube Goldberg contraption for committing some felonies and barely preventing others. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.