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Published Nov 2018
304 pages
Genre: Mysteries
Publication Information
A wryly entertaining new crime novel from Lynne Truss, New York Times bestselling author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves.
It's 1957, and the famed theater critic A. S. Crystal has come to the British seaside resort of Brighton with something other than the local production of A Shilling in the Meter on his mind. Sitting in the Brighton Royal Theater with Constable Twitten, Crystal intends to tell the detective the secret he knows about the still-unsolved Aldersgate Stick-Up case of 1945. And yet, just before Crystal names the criminal mastermind involved, he's shot dead in his seat.
With a new murder case on his hands and a lazy captain at the helm of the police department, the keen and clever Constable Twitten and his colleague Sargent Jim Brunswick set out to solve the decade-old mystery of the Aldersgate Stick-Up. As the partners venture deep into the criminal underworld that lies beneath Brighton's holiday-happy veneer, they begin to discover a criminal conspiracy that dates back decades. But will Brunswick and Twitten be able to foil the mastermind, or will Crystal's death become just another unsolved crime in this seemingly peaceful seaside city?
With her characteristic wit, New York Times bestselling author Lynne Truss introduces readers to a cast of eccentric policeman and scheming criminals in a drolly delightful mystery you won't want to miss.
"Starred Review. [Truss] makes her crime fiction debut with this hilarious series launch...Truss successfully combines wry humor with a fair-play mystery." - Publishers Weekly
"Truss piles up ingenious plot twists, preposterous coincidences, snarky asides, and characters out of P.G. Wodehouse...Readers who can suspend their disbelief are in for quite a workout." - Kirkus
"Truss' language, unsurprisingly, sparkles, and her portrayal of class and its exasperating effect on even the British underworld is memorable. Readers of Agatha Christie are a natural audience for this study in peculiarity." - Booklist
"Pitch-perfect send-up of 1950s Brighton with nods to Graham Greene ... ingenious plot ... Hilarious." - The Sunday Times (UK)
"With plenty of brightly coloured bucket-and-spadery, including ghost trains and Punch and Judy and variety acts, this clever, tongue-in-cheek escapade is a perfect summer read." - The Guardian (UK)
"Truss's affection for a rollicking, twisty caper has transferred to the page with ease ... there's some fine storytelling on display here." The Observer (UK)
"I doubt even Constable Twitten could work out how she has produced a whodunit that exudes heartwarming cosiness whilst boasting Game of Thrones levels of violent death, or given her cast of amusing caricatures more life than most of the characters I've encountered in fiction this year." - Daily Telegraph (UK)
"Truss' language, unsurprisingly, sparkles, and her portrayal of class and its exasperating effect on even the British underworld is memorable. Readers of Agatha Christie are a natural audience for this study in peculiarity." - Booklist Online
"It takes a writer of Lynne Truss's wit and intelligence .. to take on both the cosy and comic fields, shaking them up to forge something fresh and beguiling... A large cast of strongly drawn characters (including an 'angry young man' dramatist) helps to keep things bubbling along, and not only is the whole thing delightfully witty - more early Evelyn Waugh than Agatha Christie - it also functions very successfully as a novel in the vein of the genre it is satirising: the police procedural ... As in Brighton Rock, we are given a vivid picture of Brighton in its pre-chic heyday, with the kiss-me-quick hats and candy-floss era providing bags of colour ... Twitten, in particular, is a delightful creation." - The Independent (UK)
"Truss's new crime novel is an unqualified masterpiece." - Glasgow Herald (UK)
"A Shot in the Dark is sheer, witty delight. Crime fiction used to be associated with high spirits, but they have become estranged over the years. Lynne Truss has put the two elements back in touch, with enchanting results." - Simon Brett, Author of Death On The Downs
This information about A Shot in the Dark was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Barry Kewis
Lynne Truss is a writer and journalist who started out as a literary editor with a blue pencil and then got sidetracked. The author of three novels and numerous radio comedy dramas, she spent six years as the television critic of The Times of London, followed by four (rather peculiar) years as a sports columnist for the same newspaper. She won Columnist of the Year for her work for Women’s Journal. Lynne Truss also hosted Cutting a Dash, a popular BBC Radio 4 series about punctuation. She now reviews books for the Sunday Times of London and is a familiar voice on BBC Radio 4. She lives in Brighton, England.
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