Oliver Farleigh-Stubbs, slavný autor detektivek, je schopen urazit kde koho. Uprostřed rodiného večírku padá mrtev k zemi a pitva prokáže násilnou smrt. Je na detektivovi Meredithovi, aby dopadl vraha. A podezřelých je tak mnoho.

Oliver Farleigh-Stubbs, slavný autor detektivek, je schopen urazit kde koho. Uprostřed rodiného večírku padá mrtev k zemi a pitva prokáže násilnou smrt. Je na detektivovi Meredithovi, aby dopadl vraha. A podezřelých je tak mnoho.

Sir Oliver Farleigh-Stubbs is a best-selling mystery writer. He is also an obnoxious, bullying, egocentric, obese, snob who is loved by his readers and despised by his family and friends. His publishers and editor tolerate him because his books bring in money.

During his intimate sixty-fifth birthday party he drops dead while sipping on an expensive and special liqueur in his fine library in his elegant country home in front of his family and guests. The family is shocked at this unexpected event, but not surprised. The man never did follow doctors’ orders, even if he said he did.

There is no love lost between Sir Oliver and his oldest son, who seems to be wasting his life in go-nowhere jobs and heavy drinking. When Sir Oliver’s will is read, all are shocked. The oldest gets not just the title, but also the bulk of the estate! Needless to say his brother and sister are furious.

Chief Inspector Meredith is given the case. Originally thought to be a death from a heart attack, it turns out to be a case of poisoning. The question is who. It looks as if there is a fair number of suspects; from family to friends to work related people to all be checked out.

The pace is good and the plot is very enjoyable. ( )

Here's enormous fun. Sir Oliver Fairleigh-Stubbs is Britain's most successful thriller writer, even though it's generally agreed his books are bloody awful. And so is he: he's vile to his family (except his gold-digging, ghastly daughter) and everyone else around him. So it's not much of a surprise when someone  spikes his favorite after-dinner liqueur with nicotinic acid, bumping the old bastard off. Enter sleuth Inspector Meredith, not an especially literary man, who must trawl among the bitchy inhabitants of an English village out of Miss Marple's nightmares as well as the London offices of Sir Oliver's publishers, deep though they are in mourning for the loss of revenue the author's death implies. Could the answer to the mystery lie in the book Sir Oliver wrote years ago but never published, the manuscript that supposedly none but the writer and an ancient ex-secretary have ever seen? It could indeed . . .

The sideswipes at the pretensions of the publishing world are obviously a part of what I found so entertaining about this romp, but the real glory is in its wry evisceration, through understated parody, of the conventions of the "cozy" murder mystery — and yet Barnard's triumph is that the novel functions extremely well as a "cozy" murder mystery itself. ( )

http://dhamel.typepad.com/book_blog/2006/01/its_a_boy_edite.html ( )