Something Nasty in the Woodshed

Book excerpt: As the amoral art dealer heads to the Isle of Jersey, the author’s “comic invention and lacerating, politically incorrect humor are in brilliant form” (Publishers Weekly). The Honorable Charlie Mortdecai—degenerate aristocrat and seasoned epicurean—has managed, somehow, to tarnish his already questionable reputation. Thanks to a few shady art deals, he’s been exiled from London. Together with his gadabout wife Johanna and his ex-con butler Jock, Mortdecai takes refuge in a country estate on the Channel Island of Jersey. But what begins as a hedonistic interlude turns into a macabre manhunt. Through the haze of drunken locals and loathsome tourists, Charlie is out to expose a local rapist whose modus operandi bears a striking resemblance to that of a warlock from ancient British mythology known as “The Beast of Jersey.”