Ten Lords A-Leaping

Ruth Dudley Edwards is my favorite mystery author. Her books are always intelligent and funny. I wish she'd write more!

As an American who spends a frightful amount of time in the UK, I found this book to be hilarious, but then I am familiar with a lot of how the UK works. For this series, it probably helps although it isn't absolutely essential. If you watch a lot of Mystery or read a lot, then you'll get by fine. This book is dry British humor. It holds no sacred cows in fact she targets and sends up sacred cows in her books. She also has a cat character, Plutarch, who is one of the funnier cats in writing without that nauseating cloyness that many authors give pets. Then again, that's probably part of the humor. If you like dry humor, if you appreciate poking fun at most everything, if you like intelligent slapstick (do you like Mr. Bean?) then you will probably appreciate the humor here. It also helps if you understand and appreciate irony. Otherwise, much of this may either bewilder or bore you. If you're a bit prudish this probably isn't your cup of tea either. One other thing - the mystery here is just a vehicle for a hilarious story. If you want mysteries to be the key, this will probably irritate you too. I wasn't particularly worried about the solution as I was enjoying the caper far more, but I knew what I was in for.

For us American types who know next to nothing about the British House of Lords, this was an instructive book. But that's not it's real purpose, of course, since it is after all a murder mystery. Baroness Jack Troutbeck, newly elevated to that title, is now in the Lords and consequently her sidekick Robert Amiss gets to investigate a murder there. One is generally less interested in the mystery in a Ruth Dudley Edwards book than enjoying the comic twists in the plot line and laughing at the even quirkier characters, and both abound in this tale. Like the previous reviewer, I believe the ending is rather contrived and it does break one of the cardinal rules of mysterydom, which is that there should be enough clues along the way to give away the identity of the murderer to a careful reader. But since this is a comic mystery that is a bit less of a crime, if you'll pardon the pun. I did not enjoy this one as much as some other Dudley Edwards mysteries, but it did keep me entertained and surely that counts for a lot. One point: someone needs to tell the writer that the state of Virginia is not in the American midwest.