Carnage on the Committee

✍ Scribed by Ruth Dudley Edwards

• Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 138 KB
• Edition: 1st U.S. ed
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

As the judges of a literary prize chip away at the author list,
someone else is chipping away at them....
When the chairperson of the prestigious Knapper-Warburton Literary Prize dies in suspicious circumstances, Robert Amiss (the token sane member of the judging panel) wastes no time in summoning Baroness "Jack" Troutbeck to step into the chair.
Speculation that a killer may be targeting the judges worries the baroness not in the slightest - it's the prospect of immersing herself in modern literature that fills her with dread. But noblesse must oblige, even when it means joining the ranks of the superciliati sitting in judgement of the literati.
With the baroness at the helm, the judges resume the task of whittling away at the short-list. But the killer, too, has resumed work and is whittling away at the judges one by one.

From Publishers Weekly

In her 10th comic Robert Amiss mystery, Dudley Edwards (The Anglo-Irish Murders) mercilessly skewers the book publishing world. The poisoning death of a peer, who served as the chairperson for the eccentric selection committee for a new British literary prize to outshine the Booker, causes a crisis. Panel member Amiss, an aspiring mystery novelist, recruits his friend, Baroness Jack Troutbeck, to fill the breach. The baroness, a politically incorrect bisexual who might remind some readers of John Dickson Carr's legendary Sir Henry Merrivale, quickly moves to impose her view that literature should be judged on its literary merits, steamrollering over her outraged colleagues who award points to entries based on the author's ethnic, economic and political backgrounds. As one judge after another meets an untimely end, the police place the remaining panel members under guard. Edwards is unabashedly cynical about publishing and the methods authors use to get ahead. The byplay between the baroness and her rivals is often amusing, though less acidly memorable than Robert Barnard's dialogue in works like Death of an Old Goat , which satirized academic politics. Those interested in solving the puzzle should be forewarned that there's no rational basis for anyone to deduce the identity of the killer, who ultimately mails a confession to the police.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

In deplorable taste and wickedly funny, this, the tenth in the Robert Amiss series, will consolidate the author's reputation for scurrilous humour. Sprightly, saucy and ingenious. -- Sunday Times

Dudley Edwards is an equal opportunities satirist. She's rude to every persuasion. -- Daily Telegraph

Marvellously entertaining and iconoclastic series of satires on the British establishment. Ruth Dudley Edwards is a crime writer whom we should treasure -sharp, intelligent and gloriously politically incorrect. -- Mail on Sunday