Clive Endive Ogive IV's Murder and Mayhem At Old Bunbury Reviewed By Lavanya Karthik of Bookpleasures.com
- By Lavanya Karthik
- Published January 27, 2011
- Humour
Lavanya Karthik
Reviewer
Lavanya Karthik: Lavanya is from Mumbai, India and is a licensed
architect and consultant in environmental management. She lives in
Mumbai with her husband and six-year old daughter. She loves reading
and enjoys a diverse range of authors across genres.
Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing
ISBN: 978-160844-682-7
Click Here To Purchase Murder and Mayhem at Old Bunbury: A Clive and Esther Tale of Humor and Intrigue
Following in the footsteps of Private Clubs in America and Around the World, Murder and Mayhem.. is a laugh riot from the word go. With a foreword by that immortal philosopher Aristotle himself (an honour he apparently begged the author for ), Murder and Mayhem.. is about just that – the chaos Old Bunbury (greatest, by far, of all the private clubs in the world) is thrown into after one of their members is found bludgeoned to death out past the fourteenth green. Not that Alfie Johnson is missed or mourned in any way; rather, it is the threat of media intrusion and police tape across the golf course that has Bunbury in a tizzy. That, and the loss of their beloved head chef as a possible suspect. All this at a time when the club teeters on the verge of making history by breaking the gender barrier that keeps its Pillow Committee an all-female preserve. Enter Esther, amateur sleuth and cantankerous waitress , who may not be depended upon to get you the food you ordered, but certainly knows more about the goings–on at Bunbury than any one else, and is determined to sniff the killer out , even in the face of death threats.
Narrated by Bunbury’s president Clive Endive Ogive IV (the pseudonym author Norm Spitzig chooses to write this series under), ‘Murder..’ is a gleeful parody of the private club, with its selective membership, distaste of the hoi polloi and a zany cast of uber-rich oddballs with some of the silliest names you’re likely to encounter outside of a PG Wodehouse novel - Eaton ‘Eat-o’ Swank, the cheerfully adulterous Muffy Inglequat, the resident skinflint Hortense Thumble, Danny Bumbery aka Tuxedo Man. Spitzig keeps the plot simple; this isn’t really a conventional murder mystery so much as a peek into the inner workings of the secret universe that is the private club, and the many absurdities intrinsic to breathing its rarefied air. He gifts his hero with a distinctive voice – wry, pompous and unabashedly Republican, with a penchant for digs at President Obama. Bunbury is nothing short of a temple to old school capitalism and certain rigorously upheld standards of behaviour (adultery, embezzlement and golfing being fondly looked upon, but a leaning towards swimming, playing tennis or supporting the Democrats swiftly dealt with) and Ogive its devoted high priest. Another highlight of the book are its illustrations - a sprinkling of grainy black and white portraits of some of its more colourful members, the odd spurious bill of services from a past club president, even a pictorial history of the club’s entrance gates.
As Aristotle himself promises, belly laughs galore!
Click Here To Purchase Murder and Mayhem at Old Bunbury: A Clive and Esther Tale of Humor and Intrigue