Murder by milk bottle : a Contstable Twitten mystery / Lynne Truss.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The quirky and charming third crime novel from New York Times bestselling author Lynne Truss.

In the wake of two extremely high-profile murder cases, and with the summer of 1957 finally winding down, Constable Twitten is eagerly anticipating a quiet spell at work. But his hoped-for rest is interrupted when he and his colleagues find a trio of bodies, all murdered with the same unusual weapon: a milk bottle.

The three victims are seemingly unconnected-a hardworking patrolman, a would-be beauty queen, and a catty BBC radio personality-so Constable Twitten, Sergeant Brunswick, and Inspector Steine are baffled. But with Brighton on high alert and the local newspaper churning out stories of a killer on the loose, the police trio is determined to solve the case and catch the killer.

Charming, witty, and full of the joyfully zany characters Truss's readers have come to love, Murder by Milk Bottle will delight old fans and new alike.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

In bestseller Truss's outstanding third Constable Twitten mystery (after 2019's The Man That Got Away), three murders by milk bottle over three hours in 1957 Brighton, England, lead to editorials wondering whether the city has become "the new milk-bottle murder capital of Great Britain." The dead are "a young beauty-contest runner-up barely old enough to have enemies; the second, a much-loved patrolman of spotless record; the third, a visiting radio celebrity known for 'skits' involving female impersonation." The victims apparently have nothing in common except the killer's m.o.--each was stunned with a pint bottle of milk before the bottle was shattered and the shards used to fatally stab them. The killings are an unwelcome development for by-the-book Constable Twitten, who longs for routine pounding-of-the-beat rather than yet another bizarre whodunit to unravel. Meanwhile, he continues to contend with the machinations of the police charlady, Mrs. Groynes, who only he knows is a master criminal, and with the antics of his clueless boss, Insp. Geoffrey Steine. In her ability to blend crime and farce, Truss is in a class of her own. Agent: Anthony Goff, David Highman Assoc. (U.K.). (Nov.)

Kirkus Book Review

Truss' third stroll down Memory Lane offers firm evidence that 1957 Brighton is packed with homicides. In the space of one eventful evening, three locals--Barbara Ashley, the runner-up in the local Milk Board's Lactic Lovelies beauty contest; Andrew Inman of the Automobile Association; and Cedric Carbody, a celebrity contestant on the BBC radio show What's Your Game?--are bashed and sliced to death with milk bottles. Sgt. Jim Brunswick, who'd looked forward to dating Barbara that very evening, is properly outraged; Inspector Geoffrey Steine, now that he's finished his own brief stint on What's Your Game? is mostly focused on the ice-cream sundae competition he'll be judging; and Palmeira Groynes, the police station's observant and efficient charlady, is preoccupied with the summit meeting of crime lords she's arranging for her ex-lover Terence Chambers. So it falls mainly to Constable Peregrine Twitten to figure out what the victims had in common that would make someone attack them with such a bizarrely unlikely weapon. Guided partly by the very different clues he picks up from Mrs. Groynes, who nobody else believes is a master criminal, and Milk Girl Pandora Holden, who had eyes for him years ago, and partly by his cocksure sense of his own abilities, but never by any sense of decorum that would lead him to filter his monstrously tactless remarks to others, Twitten presses on as the body count rises to impossible heights before he finally identifies a killer who's both unguessable and, well, unnoticeable. Truss faithfully re-creates both the ingenious appeal and the formulaic limitations of golden-age puzzlers. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Lynne Truss was born on May 31, 1955, in Kingston upon Thames, England. She is an English writer and journalist. Her book Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation was a best-seller in 2003.

Truss received a first-class honors degree in English Language and Literature from University College London in 1977. After graduation, she worked for the Radio Times as a sub-editor before moving to the Times Higher Education Supplement as the deputy literary editor in 1978. From 1986 to 1990, she was the literary editor of The Listener and was an arts and books reviewer for The Independent on Sunday before joining The Times in 1991. She currently reviews books for The Sunday Times. She has also written numerous books including Tennyson's Gift; Going Loco; Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation; and Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door.

(Bowker Author Biography)