The Anty Boisjoly Mysteries

There’s a literary niche for all tastes including those who think that either Agatha Christie wasn’t funny enough or that PG Wodehouse didn’t feature anywhere near as many baffling murders as he could have. The Case of the Canterfell Codicil is a classic, cozy, locked-room mystery written in the style of an homage to PG Wodehouse.

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.

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.

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 all Anty Boisjoly mysteries, Reckoning at the Riviera Royale is a stand-alone stumper populated with eccentric characters and composed of impossible murder and improbable intrigues, delivered with signature Boisjoly banter, and it’s best enjoyed by those who like a little humor in their whodunnit.

In The Case of the Case of Kilcladdich, golden-age gadabout Anty Boisjoly travels to the timeless source waters of Glen Glennegie to help decide the fate of his family’s favourite ferment, but an impossible locked room murder is only one of a multitude of mysteries that try Anty’s wits and witticisms to their northern limit. Time trickles down on the traditional tipple as Anty unravels family feuds, ruptured romance, shepherdless sheep, and a series of suspiciously surfacing secrets to sort out who killed whom and how and why and who might be next to die.

It’s a classic, manor house, mystery-within-a-locked-room-mystery for Anty Boisjoly when a death is foretold by a mystic that Anty’s sure is a charlatan. But when an impossible murder follows the foretelling, Anty and his old ally and nemesis Inspector Wittersham must sift the connivance, contrivance, misguidance, and faith in pseudoscience of the household and its haunted history before the killer strikes again.

Golden-age gadabout Anty Boisjoly, his valet Vickers, the weary and wary Inspector Wittersham, and a passenger list of howling eccentrics find themselves prey to the sway and spray of the Scilly Seas when what at first seems a simple, unexplainable, locked-stateroom murder twists into a tale of pirate treasure, perilous weather and treacherous endeavours at sea.

When his uncle is accused of an impossible crime by the wary and weary and ever leery Inspector Wittersham, Anty’s mum sends him to the wilds of Epping Forest to sort out who could have managed to murder the universally disliked taskmaster of a health resort dedicated to the repression and suppression of the best of the seven sins.