Poison At The Pueblo

January 16, 2012
In Heald’s refreshingly light 12th Simon Bognor mystery (after 2011’s Death in the Opening Chapter), Bognor, the head of Special Investigations at the Board of Trade, is pleasantly surprised to get word from Downing Street that he’s receiving a knighthood. Despite this honor, Bognor locks horns with the prime minister over the investigator’s plan to journey to Spain to look into the death of Jimmy Trubshawe, a gang leader who perished from food poisoning after eating some mushrooms. Bognor hopes to use Trubshawe’s death as a way to get leverage over British expat criminals living on the Spanish coast. Against the prime minister’s wishes, Bognor and his enjoyably acerbic wife, Monica, travel to Madrid to start his inquiries. The author’s dry humor (“Doing nothing came naturally to him”) is a plus, as is a plot line that’s far from run-of-the-mill.

February 15, 2012
A knighthood does nothing to moderate Simon Bognor's preference for literate japery over honest sleuthing. As head of the Special Investigation Division for the Board of Trade, Sir Simon (Death in the Opening Chapter, 2011, etc.) can pretty much manage his own portfolio. The latest case he fancies is gangster Jimmy Trubshawe's death by mushroom. Since escaping from Scrubs five years ago, Jimmy's mostly been lying low in sunny Spain, and he ended his days as a conversationalist at the English Experience, a total-immersion school-cum-resort for Spanish business types. When the same Prime Minster who elevated Simon to a knighthood makes it clear that he wants Simon to stay far away from the case, it's like waving a red flag in front of a not very smart bull. So nothing daunted, Simon, with his wife Lady Monica and his dogsbody Harvey Contractor, heads off to the English Experience, whose current residents and staff seem to revel in their connections to the late Jimmy. All three of the native English speakers--Tracey, George and Camilla--have roots in Essex, Jimmy's stomping ground. Camilla, who tells Simon that she and her SIS mates had a hand in Princess Diana's death, blandly assures Simon that she's equally involved in Jimmy's death. George may be Jimmy's brother, and Lola, a superstar Franciscan nun, may have been his mistress. Fans of retro British puzzlers will doubtless wait eagerly for the climactic revelations. Readers will be disappointed by the non-solution, which Simon has the nerve to blame on 10 Downing Street instead of the author, only if they've made the mistake of taking the mystery any more seriously than the characters' endless chatter about prawns, poison and themselves.

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February 1, 2012
Having attained a knighthood while keeping most of his teeth and hair and now approaching retirement, Simon Bognor, head of the Board of Trade's Special Investigations Department, has become a loose cannon. When Jimmy Trubshawe, a nasty piece of work who escaped a British prison to go to Spain, dies at an exclusive language school outside Salamanca, Bognor ignores the prime minister's wish to desist in investigating and takes off to sniff out a possible murder and unearth other British criminals who retired to the Costas. This requires Bognor going undercover at the school and provides Heald the opportunity to scatter idioms as he may. The pleasure in Bognor mysteries is more in the process than the denouement, and the wordplay here is deft and sharp, from politics played at a high level to a rumination on the merits of English bangers versus Spanish chorizos. Wit la Wodehouse, tempered with occasional harsh reality, adds up to a winner.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)