The Wooden Overcoat
Published on 18. July 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
200 pages
978-1-63194-310-2 (ISBN)
Description
A comedy of manners and the odd dead body
London is full of clubs. The Garrick, for example, caters to those with theatrical inclinations, the Athenaeum to eggheads. But the Asterisk may have the strictest membership regulations: Acquitted murderers only.
Happily, Benjamin Cann fits the brief. Sure, he strangled Rachel Bolger with a length of pongee silk, but the jury thought different, so while Benji's old landlord may not want him back, the Asterisk gang-suave Clifford Flush (pushed ladies off trains), Mitteleuropean sexpot Lilli Cluj (crushed her husband with a bumper-car), et al.-offers a warm welcome. Benji doesn't love the thought of sharing digs with people more than usually inclined to poison the sherry, but the motherly Mrs. Barratt (dosed Mr. B with ground glass) is delighted. So nice to have fresh blood. And it will be such fun to watch him meet the neighbors!
London is full of clubs. The Garrick, for example, caters to those with theatrical inclinations, the Athenaeum to eggheads. But the Asterisk may have the strictest membership regulations: Acquitted murderers only.
Happily, Benjamin Cann fits the brief. Sure, he strangled Rachel Bolger with a length of pongee silk, but the jury thought different, so while Benji's old landlord may not want him back, the Asterisk gang-suave Clifford Flush (pushed ladies off trains), Mitteleuropean sexpot Lilli Cluj (crushed her husband with a bumper-car), et al.-offers a warm welcome. Benji doesn't love the thought of sharing digs with people more than usually inclined to poison the sherry, but the motherly Mrs. Barratt (dosed Mr. B with ground glass) is delighted. So nice to have fresh blood. And it will be such fun to watch him meet the neighbors!
Reviews / Votes
"Ingenious farce...even the dead bodies are ghoulishly diverting" -Sunday Times "Gloriously gruesome, and very funny" -The QueenMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 203 mm
Width: 137 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
318 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-63194-310-2 (9781631943102)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Pamela Branch was "the funniest lady you ever knew," according to well-known mystery writer Christianna Brand. Born in 1920 on her father's tea plantation in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), she was educated in England and dabbled in both art and acting before returning to Asia-first to her family in Ceylon and then on to India; for three years her home was a houseboat in Kashmir. She trekked in the Himalayas, trained racehorses, learned falconry, and became fluent in Urdu. Could there be better training for a mystery writer? Back in England for...five minutes(?), she married barrister Newton Branch, and the two moved to Cyprus, where they lived in a 12th-century monastery on the edge of a cliff. He wrote adventure stories, she wrote The Wooden Overcoat (1951), and then they moved on again. She produced her remaining three novels in Ireland, France, and London, respectively. Why, oh why, weren't there more? Branch died of cancer in 1967. Death, it seems, had the last laugh.