From Publishers Weekly
Witty, weird and highly enjoyable, this gothic British tale is aptly titled. The set-up is macabre: a distinguished paleontologist is brain-damaged and slowly turning into a vegetable. He cannot speak, but narrates an interior monologue of all he sees and hears: a lot of sexual shenanigans and a particularly grisly murder, all centered around "Fledge," the butler, who has ambitions. The stylistic joke is that all these horrors take place in a quaint, genteel English country setting, where the village is "Pock-on-the-Fling," the pub, "The Hodge and Purlet" and the barrister, "Sir Fleckley Tome." However deadly the deed, the language is always decorous and impeccably mannered. The result is strangely hilarious--as if a Stephen King story were being told in the manner of a latter-day Anthony Trollope.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
A disturbing gothic tale set in a Berkshire manor house in 1949. Sir Hugo Coal, amateur palaeontologist and sexual fantasist, recounts the fall of the House of Crook. He is also convinced that Fledge his new butler will steal his title and his wife. But can Sir Hugo himself be trusted?
