The Third Charlie Mortdecai Novel

Something Nasty in the Woodshed

Something Nasty in the Woodshed - the third Charlie Mortdecai novel 
 
'Splendidly enjoyable. The jokes are excellent, but the most horrible things keep happening' Sunday Telegraph 
 
'Spring was infesting the air in no uncertain fashion and I awoke, for once, with a feeling of well-being and an urge to go for long country walks.' 
 
Charlie Mortdecai - minor aristocrat and art-dealer banished from London for crimes against, well, art - has decamped to the tiny island of Jersey with his wife Johanna and manservant Jock. There, amidst tax dodgers and inbred natives, he had hoped to lie low, and sink lower. But when a friend's wife is attacked, Charlie is forced to turn sleuth to discover the perpetrator. As further attacks occur, of an increasingly Satanic nature, Charlie finds he is desperate to solve the crimes before things turn truly Hellish . . . 
 
'You couldn't snuggle under the duvet with anything more disreputable and delightful' Stephen Fry 
 
'A comic masterpiece . . . the Bonfiglioli revival will surly gather apace, for he is by far the best thing to have happened again in years' Spectator 
 
Kyril Bonfiglioli was born on the south coast of England in 1928 of an English mother and Italo-Slovene father. After studying at Oxford and five years in the army, he took up a career as an art dealer, like his eccentric creation Charlie Mortdecai. He lived in Oxford, Lancashire, Ireland and Jersey, where he died in 1985. He wrote four Charlie Mortdecai novels, and a fifth historical Mortdecai novel (about a distinguished ancestor).

Kyril Bonfiglioli was born on the south coast of England of an English mother and Italo-Slovene father. After studying at Oxford and five years in the army, he took up a career as an art dealer. He wrote three Mortdecai novels (of which this is the third), a historical novel involving an ancestor of Mortdecai, and left a fifth novel unfinished at his death in 1985. Since he died, the Mortdecai novels have achieved cult status.

Art dealer and assassin Charlie Mortdecai has fled to Jersey, taking his thug Jock along with him, just in case. For now though he's had enough of secret government agencies, of stolen paintings, of terrifying Chinese gangs, and he's getting on surprisingly well with his nubile young wife. But there's no peace for the wicked - and Charlie can sometimes be very wicked indeed. When it seems there's a sexual pervert at loose on the island targeting nice middle-class ladies, Charlie takes it upon himself to find the deviant. Which is how he finds himself in the dead of night up against a tree, his ear nailed to the trunk...

The Fourth Charlie Mortdecai Novel

The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery

The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery - the fourth Charlie Mortdecai novel, soon to be a major film starring Johnny Depp 
 
'Deliciously nasty ... An adventurously off-piste whodunit' Observer 
 
'She was a Fellow and Tutor of Scone College and the world must learn that Fellows and Tutors of Scone College shall not be done to death with impunity.' 
 
The Hon. Charlie Mortdecai (and his intrepid moustache) is invited to Oxford to investigate the cruel and most definitely unusual death of a don who collided with an omnibus. Though her death appears accidental, one or two things don't add up - such as two pairs of thugs who'd been following her just before her death. With more spies than you could shoe horn into a stretch limo and the solving of the odd murder along the way, The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery is a criminally comic delight. 
 
'Gloriously, infectiously funny' Guardian 
 
'The result of stewing together PG Wodehouse and Raymond Chandler, lightly seasoned with Ian Fleming and Damon Runyon, then adding a jigger of Groucho Marx and a dash of the Marquis de Sade' Mail on Sunday 
 
'A delightfully black comedy thriller - and it will tell you everything you need to know about onanism in fourth-century China' Observer 
 
'Blissfully funny' Independent 
 
Kyril Bonfiglioli was born on the south coast of England in 1928 of an English mother and Italo-Slovene father. After studying at Oxford and five years in the army, he took up a career as an art dealer, like his eccentric creation Charlie Mortdecai. He lived in Oxford, Lancashire, Ireland and Jersey, where he died in 1985. He wrote four Charlie Mortdecai novels, and a fifth historical Mortdecai novel (about a distinguished ancestor).

Art dealer and eccentric, Kyril Bonfiglioli was the author of the deliciously funny Mortdecai novels. He died in Jersey in 1985. 
 
Craig Brown writes weekly columns for the Mail on Sunday and Private Eye. He lives in Suffolk.

Kyril Bonfiglioli's final novel follows the Hon. Charlie Mortdecai from adventure to misadventure via Jersey and Moscow to a final showdown in a Buckinghamshire bungalow of unparalleled hideousness. Tackling en route an unhealthy sprinkling of well-seasoned academics, a cryptic monk, an aristocratic Chief Constable, and more spies than you could shoehorn into a black stretch limo, Mordecai finds himself embroiled in another mission of international insecurity after the death of a lady don in Oxford. Left unfinished at the time of the author's death, the celebrated satirist and parodist Craig Brown supplies the penultimate, plot-resolving chapter.

The Second Charlie Mortdecai Novel

After You with the Pistol

After you with the Pistol - the second Charlie Mortdecai novel by Kyril Bonfiglioli, soon to be a major film starring Johnny Depp 
 
'Some of the nastiest, funniest and most enjoyable crime writing of the last fifty years' Guardian 
 
'Mr Mortdecai, why do you suppose I and my superiors have preserved you from death at very very great trouble and expense?' 
 
Charlie Mortdecai - degenerate aristocrat and victim of his own larceny and licentiousness - has no idea. Until it is made clear to him that he must marry the beautiful, sex-crazed and very, very rich Johanna Krampf. The fly in the ointment is that Johanna thinks nothing of involving poor Charlie in her life-threatening schemes such as monarch-assassination, heroin smuggling and - worst of all - survival training at a college for feminist spies. Perhaps, it's all in a good cause - if only Charlie can live long enough to find out. 
 
'A rare mixture of wit and imaginative unpleasantness' Julian Barnes 
 
'Splendidly enjoyable. The jokes are excellent, but the most horrible things keep happening' Sunday Telegraph 
 
'At least of Hammett-Chandler weight, and in many ways surpasses them' The Times Literary Supplement 
 
Kyril Bonfiglioli was born on the south coast of England in 1928 of an English mother and Italo-Slovene father. After studying at Oxford and five years in the army, he took up a career as an art dealer, like his eccentric creation Charlie Mortdecai. He lived in Oxford, Lancashire, Ireland and Jersey, where he died in 1985. He wrote four Charlie Mortdecai novels, and a fifth historical Mortdecai novel (about a distinguished ancestor).

Kyril Bonfiglioli was born on the south coast of England of an English mother and Italo-Slovene father. After studying at Oxford and five years in the army, he took up a career as an art dealer, like his eccentric creation Charlie Mortdecai. He wrote three Mortdecai novels, of which this is the second, a fourth historical novel about an ancestor of Mortdecai, and left a fifth unfinished at his death in 1985.

Art dealer and assassin Charlie Mortdecai has got himself married - it wasn't his choice exactly, a little pressure was exerted by certain secret government organizations who wanted to keep the lady in check, but it's not an entirely unenjoyable experience: she brings a lot of assets with her. Until, that is, he discovers she has some surprising interests and she wants to get him involved. Which is why he's trying hard to get himself imprisoned, safely away from the pursuing Chinese gangs...

A Charlie Mortdecai novel

All the Tea in China

All the Tea in China - a Mortdecai novel by Kyril Bonfiglioli, soon to be a major film starring Johnny Depp 
 
'One of the funniest writers ever' Uncut 
 
After committing a crime anyone but a close relative might forgive, Karli Mortdecai Van Cleef leaves Holland double-quick with his uncle's buckshot lodged firmly in the seat of his breeches. Discretion being the least-idiotic part of valour he decides to hide far away in London, among the tea shops and opium dens. On savouring these Eastern delicacies and knowing an opportunity when he sups upon one, young Karli throws in his lot with an opium clipper bound for China's high seas. 
 
Life on the ocean waves, however, is full of perils for an officer and his sensitive digestive tract: mountainous waves, an encounter with a malodorous slave ship, the captain's wife's pulse-racingly brief wardrobe, several hordes of pirates, mutiny, the ship's cook's fondness for curry - to name but a few. 
 
All the Tea in China is a swaggering, rip-snorting, buckler-swashing tale about one of the men who - for a reasonable fee - made Britain great. 
 
'For those who have learnt to relish his elegant, nasty thrillers, Bonfiglioli is a name hard to forget. This farrago represents a change from the thrillers - a good clean salt-water yarn for the decadent' Irish Press 
 
'Shows his customary inventive comedy and zest for language' Sunday Times 
 
'Bonfiglioli deserves better than cult status' Independent 
 
Kyril Bonfiglioli was born on the south coast of England in 1928 of an English mother and Italo-Slovene father. After studying at Oxford and five years in the army, he took up a career as an art dealer, like his eccentric creation Charlie Mortdecai. He lived in Oxford, Lancashire, Ireland and Jersey, where he died in 1985. He wrote four Charlie Mortdecai novels, and a fifth historical Mortdecai novel (about a distinguished ancestor).

Inspired by a shotgun-blast in the seat of his breeches, young Karli Van Cleer quits his native Holland to seek his fortune. ALL THE TEA IN CHINA follows his perilous journey across the globe, as Karli is confronted by mountainous seas, high-piled plates of curry and the ferocious penalties of the Articles of War.  En route he acquires some interesting diseases, a fortune, and a wife almost as good as new. And changes his name to Mortdecai.  Addicts and newcomers alike will revel in this lusty tale of an ancestor of Charlie Mortdecai who helped make Britain great  - for a price.

Kyril Bonfiglioli

The First Charlie Mortdecai Novel

Portly art dealer and seasoned epicurean Charlie Mortdecai comes into possesion of a stolen Goya, the disappearance of which is causing a diplomatic ruction between Spain and its allies. Not that that matters to Charlie ... until compromising pictures of some British diplomats also come into his possession and start to muddy the waters. All he's trying to do is make a dishonest living, but various governments, secret organizations and an unbelievably nubile young German don't see it that way and  pretty soon he's in great need of his thuggish manservant Jock to keep them all at bay ... and the Goya safe.

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