Anty Boisjoly takes on his twistiest test to date in a tale of curses and crows, crypts and conspiracies, concealed corridors and clever crimes, delivered with a generous overpour of locked room murder and bouyant Boisjoly banter. The ancient curse of Carnaby Castle has begun taking victims again — either that, or someone’s very cleverly done away with the new young bride of the philandering family patriarch, and the chief suspect is none other than Carnaby, London’s finest club steward. Anty Boisjoly’s wits and witticisms are tested to their frozen limit as he sifts the superstitions, suspicions, and age-old schisms of the mediaeval Peak District village of Hoy to sort out how it was done before Carnaby’s served his last scotch-and-soda. Like the other Anty Boisjoly adventures, this is a stand-alone, repertory story intended for those who like their twisty mysteries narrated with a little strategic silliness and boisterous banter.

In The Case of the Canterfell Codicil , Wodehousian gadabout and clubman Anty Boisjoly takes on his first case when his old Oxford chum and coxswain is facing the gallows, accused of the murder of his wealthy uncle. Not one but two locked-room mysteries later, Boisjoly’s pitting his wits and witticisms against a subversive butler, a senile footman, a single-minded detective-inspector, an irascible goat, and the eccentric conventions of the pastoral Sussex countryside to untangle a multi-layered mystery of secret bequests, ancient writs, love triangles, revenge, and a teasing twist in the final paragraph.

Anty Boisjoly tackles the strange case of a war hero who visits his old friends on Christmas morning — after being murdered on Christmas Eve. In The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning, Wodehousian clubman, flaneur, idler and sleuth Anty Boisjoly pits his sardonic wits against another pair of impossible murders. This time, Anty Boisjoly’s Aunty Boisjoly is the only possible suspect when a murder victim stands his old friends a farewell drink at the local, hours after being murdered.

Anty Boisjoly is back to fill the gap that overlaps between Ruth Rendell and PG Wodehouse, and where Jerome K Jerome meets Dorothy L Sayers. The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine is another mystifying, manor house stumper for Wodehousian bon-vivant and problem-solver Anty Boisjoly, when his clubmate asks him to determine who died first after a duel is fought in a locked room. The untold riches of the Tenpenny Tontine are in the balance, but the stakes only get higher when Anty determines that, duel or not, this was a case of murder.