Novel set in Europe, Manila and Turkey
Cozy crime set mainly in CORNWALL
24th October 2024
Agnes Sharp and the Trip of a Lifetime by Leonie Swann, cozy crime set mainly in CORNWALL.
Translated by Amy Bojang.
Gather together a group of larger than life, quirky – oddball, even – pensioners, with a penchant for sleuthing, and one immediately thinks of Richard Osman. His Thursday Murder Club series has been a real hit and has spawned some pale imitations and sadly this is one.
Agnes Sharp has opened her large home – Sunset Hall in Duck End – to all kinds of elderly folk. Of course they have weird proclivities and habits, because old people need to be colourful and entertaining (I mean, what else is there in life for them?). One evening, Agnes is on her way home and gets drawn to the belfry of the local church, where she finds the verger hanging by the neck from one of the bell ropes. He is twitching in the throes of death. She cannot be ars*d to call the police, so hops aboard the local bus, which whisks her away from the scene. Murder and death seem rather prolific of late in their not-so-idyllic enclave, she muses, long gone are the days when people simply shaved cats (eh?) or clobbered a few copper nails into apple trees (I confess I had to look up this errant behaviour – but it seems that doing so would protect the tissue of the tree from bacterial colonisation, so I have no idea what that was about).
She arrives home and discovers mayhem, because Edwina is striking the warrior pose (she likes yoga), and it transpires she has been on the internet, entered a competition and has won a ‘romantic’ holiday for two people at The Eden in Cornwall. Who will accompany her? She debates whether the animals should join her (Hettie the tortoise who hibernates in the fridge, or perhaps Brexit (too soon!) the Wolfhound should be her companion), or her dearly departed human friend, Lillith, who had fallen prey to a bullet some months previously, and now resides in an easily transportable tin; she must make a choice! In fact, the whole household decides to decamp to Newquay for a few days of pampering at The Eden. A laugh-a-minute trip in a plane ensues (what is that flight attendant doing messing around with a lifejacket???) and because Hettie cannot join them physically, they sally forth with a blow up rubber tortoise, which bobs above them as they proceed through security. Like the seniors, Hettie 2 is in need of regular inflating.
Ensconced at the hotel, Agnes is enjoying her organic nuts with a drink but through the window, looking onto the coastal path, she espies something remarkably odd. Has she just witnessed a murder, perchance? And all at once, the relaxed nature of their stay seems a distant memory, as Agnes swings into investigator mode, helped and hampered by the cohort of elderly guests.
The novel has been well translated but the subject matter is a matter of personal taste. This is a novel in translation and German humour can sometimes lack a lightness of touch, it is marked by its droll nature, and I imagine the German audience, for whom this story seems to have been penned, will guffaw at the bumbling, eccentric Brits, as they stagger around on their sticks, deftly dancing with decrepitude and nursing Oberon the snake. This is not because they are necessarily British but because their antics will appeal to the German sense of humour (I suggest this as someone who is of German heritage). But I think for a British audience it is all too over-the-top, the subtle humour for which the Brits are known, is missing and the tropes of an older lifestyle can be quite cringeworthy (toilet breaks coupled with drying one’s hair with a duvet. Right!). The stock characters (yes, there is one member of the group who used to be in the police force, another who knows her way around the Secret Service and still imagines she is on a mission…) are well-worn and it’s all, well, just a bit silly.
I know very well that German authors can really tap into the English-speaking cozy crime market, and you just need to look at Murder at the Castle: A Miss Merkel Mystery by David Safier (translated by Jamie Bulloch), which will set the record straight on German humour and observation; it translates well on all levels for a British audience. And above all, the humour is deftly handled.
The doyen of the geriatric sleuthing community is Richard Osman, and his crown is still firmly in place given this is an unbelievably daft story.
Not one for me.
Tina for the TripFiction Team
Join team TripFiction on Social Media:
Twitter (@TripFiction), Facebook (@TripFiction.Literarywanderlust), YouTube (TripFiction #Literarywanderlust), Instagram (@TripFiction) and Pinterest (@TripFiction) and BlueSky(tripfiction.bsky.social) and Threads (@tripfiction)
Please wait...
