A Good Mystery Story With A Lot Of Humor Sprinkled Throughout

Years ago when I was driving long distance I used to get a number of detective, police procedurals, and Lilian Braun’s The Cat Who series books on CDs from the library to pass the time with while traveling. I started looking for books similar to The Cat Who series after Lilian Braun passed away, and Pork Pie Pandemonium by Steve Higgs, book one in the Albert Smith Culinary Capers, involves a retired detective who travels Britain by rail with his German shepherd ex-police dog Rex Harrison (fired for “having a bad attitude”) in search of entertaining culinary related adventures, that always end up with a murder they need to solve, often causing consternation to local chief constables and detectives. 

I regularly read a lot of memoirs, acclaimed literary fiction, highly rated thrillers and mysteries, but I also need books that are fun to read, and this one turned out to have a good mystery story with a lot of humor sprinkled throughout the book, often involving the dog, so it was enjoyable. I’m not sure it quite rises to the level of The Cat Who series, but still entertaining, and you learn about different areas of Britain, and the foods popular in those locations. This was one humorous passage involving dog Rex: “Rex glared at his human. ‘I am not talking to you and I am not helping with your silly investigation. Solve it by yourself, you ungrateful noseless human.’ Feeling that wasn’t enough, he vowed to sleep under the bed tonight and fart as much as he could.”

In the humor vein there are also two contributing characters, Malcolm and Mikey, who are part of the criminal enterprise involving the initial murder. As ne’er do well relatives of the guy at the top, they get foisted off on his underlings, as they are not the sharpest tools in the shed, which makes for amusing banter, ie an instance when they are discussing the need to be unobtrusive when the boss has ordered them to follow someone, “‘Nonsense,’ argued Malcolm. ‘My disguise makes me invisible. I just look like a man reading a magazine. Whereas you look like a stalker.’ Mikey shook his head. ‘You’ve walked into three trees, trodden in dog poop and fallen over two broken paving slabs. Not only that, you’re holding a copy of Woman’s World. You look like an idiot.’ ‘And you’re wearing dark sunglasses, a stupid hat, and you’ve got your collar turned up to hide as much of your ugly mug as possible.” These two are the bane of ruthless local crime operator Brenda, who used to be a self employed criminal mastermind, but encroached on the big guy’s territory and now works for him, as it was preferable to “option A” which likely involved a painful death. 

Book one was good enough that I’ll continue on with book two in this 15 volume series of stand alone books: Bakewell Tart Bludgeoning, Albert Smith's Culinary Capers Recipe 2, described in the book blurb as “On a culinary tour of the British Isles, retired Detective Superintendent Albert Smith and snarky former police dog Rex Harrison find something quite unexpected waiting for them at their B&B...it’s the almost-dead body of their landlady.”