Charlie Mortdecai
1 primary work • 5 total works
Book 4
Something Nasty in the Woodshed - the third Charlie Mortdecai novel
'Splendidly enjoyable. The jokes are excellent, but the most horrible things keep happening' Sunday Telegraph
'Spring was infesting the air in no uncertain fashion and I awoke, for once, with a feeling of well-being and an urge to go for long country walks.'
Charlie Mortdecai - minor aristocrat and art-dealer banished from London for crimes against, well, art - has decamped to the tiny island of Jersey with his wife Johanna and manservant Jock. There, amidst tax dodgers and inbred natives, he had hoped to lie low, and sink lower. But when a friend's wife is attacked, Charlie is forced to turn sleuth to discover the perpetrator. As further attacks occur, of an increasingly Satanic nature, Charlie finds he is desperate to solve the crimes before things turn truly Hellish . . .
'You couldn't snuggle under the duvet with anything more disreputable and delightful' Stephen Fry
'A comic masterpiece . . . the Bonfiglioli revival will surly gather apace, for he is by far the best thing to have happened again in years' Spectator
Kyril Bonfiglioli was born on the south coast of England in 1928 of an English mother and Italo-Slovene father. After studying at Oxford and five years in the army, he took up a career as an art dealer, like his eccentric creation Charlie Mortdecai. He lived in Oxford, Lancashire, Ireland and Jersey, where he died in 1985. He wrote four Charlie Mortdecai novels, and a fifth historical Mortdecai novel (about a distinguished ancestor).
Don't Point That Thing At Me by Kyril Bonfiglioli - Book 1 of the Mortdecai Trilogy, now a major motion picture starring Johnny Depp
Introducing the Hon. Charlie Mortdecai, art dealer, aristocrat and assassin, in the first of the Mortdecai novels
Portly art dealer and seasoned epicurean Charlie Mortdecai comes into possesion of a stolen Goya, the disappearance of which is causing a diplomatic ruction between Spain and its allies. Not that that matters to Charlie ... until compromising pictures of some British diplomats also come into his possession and start to muddy the waters. All he's trying to do is make a dishonest living, but various governments, secret organizations and an unbelievably nubile young German don't see it that way and pretty soon he's in great need of his thuggish manservant Jock to keep them all at bay ... and the Goya safe.
First published in the 1970s, this hilarious novel is part Ian Fleming part P G Wodehouse. It is now a major motion picture starring Johnny Depp as Mortdecai, Ewan McGregor as Jock and Gwyneth Paltrow.
'A rare mixture of wit and imaginative unpleasantness' Julian Barnes
'You couldn't snuggle under the duvet with anything more disreputable and delightful' Stephen Fry
'The jokes are excellent, but the most horrible things keep happening... Funny and chilling' Sunday Telegraph
Kyril Bonfiglioli was born on the south coast of England in 1928 of an English mother and Italo-Slovene father. After studying at Oxford and five years in the army, he took up a career as an art dealer, like his eccentric creation Charlie Mortdecai. He lived in Oxford, Lancashire, Ireland and Jersey, where he died in 1985. He wrote four Charlie Mortdecai novels, and a fifth historical Mortdecai novel (about a distinguished ancestor).
After you with the Pistol - the second Charlie Mortdecai novel by Kyril Bonfiglioli, soon to be a major film starring Johnny Depp
'Some of the nastiest, funniest and most enjoyable crime writing of the last fifty years' Guardian
'Mr Mortdecai, why do you suppose I and my superiors have preserved you from death at very very great trouble and expense?'
Charlie Mortdecai - degenerate aristocrat and victim of his own larceny and licentiousness - has no idea. Until it is made clear to him that he must marry the beautiful, sex-crazed and very, very rich Johanna Krampf. The fly in the ointment is that Johanna thinks nothing of involving poor Charlie in her life-threatening schemes such as monarch-assassination, heroin smuggling and - worst of all - survival training at a college for feminist spies. Perhaps, it's all in a good cause - if only Charlie can live long enough to find out.
'A rare mixture of wit and imaginative unpleasantness' Julian Barnes
'Splendidly enjoyable. The jokes are excellent, but the most horrible things keep happening' Sunday Telegraph
'At least of Hammett-Chandler weight, and in many ways surpasses them' The Times Literary Supplement
Kyril Bonfiglioli was born on the south coast of England in 1928 of an English mother and Italo-Slovene father. After studying at Oxford and five years in the army, he took up a career as an art dealer, like his eccentric creation Charlie Mortdecai. He lived in Oxford, Lancashire, Ireland and Jersey, where he died in 1985. He wrote four Charlie Mortdecai novels, and a fifth historical Mortdecai novel (about a distinguished ancestor).