Customer Reviews

After You With The Pistol

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

While it is a little dated (published in 1979), this book is great fun. It is full of dry, zany British humor and lots of plot twists. I look forward to reading Bonfiglioli's other works. Summary from the cover:

"This caper finds Charlie the recent bridegroom of a voluptuous millionairess who is involved in a plot to assassinate the Queen of England; at the none-too-tender mercies of a Chinese dentist (the inscrutable Lo Fang Hi); and in terrified possession of the costliest baby powder in the world--among other mishaps."

After I read the first novel in the series, "Don't Point That Thing at Me," and really enjoyed it, I was looking forward to the further adventures of C. Mortdecai. I wasn't disappointed. While not as tight or well designed as the first novel, the central character Charlie uses the same ironic, charming banter that makes these books unique.

Since the author was an art dealer, there are several fascinating descriptions of art restoration and forgery techniques. Many have compared the Bonfiglioli writing to P.G. Wodehouse. As a nod of acknowledgement, Mortdecai mentions Wodehouse a couple of times in the novel.

If you liked the first one, be sure to pick this one up as well.

If you've read my review of the first book, Don't Point That Thing at Me, you know 80% of what I'm going to say here. These books are devastatingly funny, witty as we never see anymore, and just crazy in terms of their plotting. By the way, this series DOES need to be read in order!

In this book, Charlie's new wife asks him to kill the Queen. Charlie tries to comply, but things get out of control, and he ends up traveling a great deal of the globe to fight what may or may not be a great conspiracy of women, with what may or may not be a life's sentence worth of illegal drugs in his possession, and most definitely rubbing shoulder with people who would be happy to torture him for three or four days before killing him. If the first book's plot seemed frenetic, this one tops it by half. That's both a strength and a weakness. This plot actually does get in the way a bit in this book.

That said, this is one fun ride, and unless your sensibilities are easily offended, well worth it.

Kyril Bonfiglioli created a bumbling "hero" named Charlie Mortdecai and wrote several novels about his exploits. After You With the Pistol is one of the Mortdecai novels. The plot - what there is of it - concerns Mortdecai's sexy wife conning him into assassinating the Queen of England. Predictably, this leads to all sorts of complications and adventures.

The real delight here is getting to know Mortdecai, a bon vivant who is sort of a cross between James Bond and Inspector Clouseau. The novel is a farce and the characters' behavior is unrealistic. As long as the reader does not expect realism, the novels are quite enjoyable. In fact, I found myself laughing out loud at times.

Because of Leo Carey's wry, admiring, melancholy essay in THE NEW YORKER, I grabbed this novel, its prequel, and its sequel when I found them at a local used bookstore, and oh, how I wanted to like them more than I ended up doing. But they're just not as good as the hype. They drift all over the place [to be fair, Carey admitted that devotees of mysteries would find these books too undisciplined], and the narrator's aggressively amoral personality -- imagine P. G. Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster crossed with Jonathan Gash's Lovejoy -- can wear on one after a while. The plots are made of Swiss cheese, at best, and these books are also sadly dated in their views of women. Maybe it's because I read the Lovejoy books before these -- if I had come to them without knowing about Lovejoy, I would have enjoyed them more.