Kyril Bonfiglioli - The Mortdecai Trilogy (Penguin)
Richard H introduces us to a degenerate artistocrat, amoral art dealer, unwilling assassin and knave about Piccadilly. Now just why isn't that surprising?
Charlie Mortdecai arrived in my life when I needed him most: about to board an airplane with nothing to read but the vomit bags and the in-flight mag. Desperately I ran through the airport bookshop with no greater aim than something to pass the hours pleasantly. Randomly did I grab at the spine, and accept at face value Stephen Fry's cover blurb - 'You couldn't snuggle under the duvet with anything more disreputable or delightful'.
The cover image of an unshaven chap clutching a bottle of champagne was enough to persuade me to part with the necessary shekels and sprint for the plane.
Lucky me. I stumbled across the single most entertaining, rollicking, moving, harrowing, vital, hilarious, and ultimately fucked-up book I have yet to read. And lucky you, because I am about to spunk 500 words demanding that you join me in exalting the work of Kyril Bonfiglioli and his genius creation.
When reviewers are stuck for descriptions, they tend to grasp at the nearest similar thing and graft the words "on speed" or similar to it. This doesn't quite cover Kyril and his masterwork, The Mortdecai Trilogy. It is not PG Wodehouse on speed. It is PG Wodehouse mortally hungover, waking up depraved and greasy surrounded by nymphs, vomit, and vaseline. It is PG Wodehouse high on Benzedrine, brandy, violence, art, wordplay, drunk on his own excess and revelling in the apocalyptic splendour of his own amoral madness. It is Bertie Wooster shooting the queen of England. In the head.
Are you sold yet? More: The Hon. Charlie Mortdecai is a decadent and debauched art dealer, thief, mountebank and brigand. His milieu is the 1970's London art world, although his jet-setting takes him to Texas, the Far East, and Jersey. His loves are booze, art, fine food, and perversity of all shapes and genders. He can shoot, fight (dirty) and love with all the elan of James Bond - but where Bond is a loyal servant of the Queen, Charlie is at heart a lazy and debased coward who would melt his grandmother down for the gold in her teeth.
Charlie has a manservant named Jock. Jock does not own many of his teeth but he makes a delicious cup of tea, and will cheerfully offer to kill or maim as deemed necessary by Charlie. Jock is a good man to have in one's employ.
The Mortdecai trilogy follows Charlie (and sometimes Jock) through three adventures: Don't Point That Thing At Me, After You With The Pistol and Something Nasty In The Woodshed. The first two are hilarious, maddening romps that go off at whatever tangents they please - rollicking through smut, romance, high adventure and low-living. The latter is funny, dark, bleak, and ultimately soul-destroying. But don't let that put you off.
Bonfiglioli died before completing the fourth Mortdecai book: The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery - recently issued with a tacked-on ending. You will need this at some point, but for now content yourself with locating and savouring the trilogy, available in one handsome volume from Penguin.
Charlie and his books kept me occupied on the plane and beyond, on a train trip around Italy. Riding through Tuscany past beautiful rolling vistas on blazingly sunny days, I let the beauty pass me by un-noticed, physically unable to tear myself away from this incredible, insane book. I recommend this wholeheartedly to anyone planning a long journey, period of incarceration, or new life as a Trappist monk.
[Published 4 July 2002]
| Comments: | |
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| sam gisoad | sep 17 2005 11:50AM |
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| Why did anyone let Craig Brown near the MMM? He's good at what he does, but makes a complete dogs' breakfast of Bonfiglioli's wonderful novel. The style is off, the structure weaker even than the original - which is saying something - and it basically reads like someone of middling intelligence attempting a malicious satire of the Bonfiglioli ouevre. I was so excited by the fact that there was anothr novel, and bitterly upset by the end. Well, maybe that's a bit extreme. Have yet to read ATTIC (what a great acronym!) but please please tell me it's as good as the trilogy... | |
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| JTO | okt 19 2003 5:09PM |
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| The MMM is worth reading, a bit of a step back to the comedy of the second novel from the darkness of the third; the post-humously written parts are crap, but they don't ruin the rest of the book as some claim. | |
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| Jim Clennell | okt 18 2003 3:42PM |
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| Agree fully with Richard H. Met Mortdecai by accident in about 1991 I think, and have bought and given away at least 5 copies! However, All the Tea In China - decent read though it is - is nowhere near as good a read in my opinion! I haven't yet dared to try the Moustache Mystery, but I have often wished that Kyril Bonfiglioli hadn't been so careless as to pass away so early. Jim C | |
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| the professor | dec 5 2002 10:47AM |
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| At last! The genius of Kyril Bonfiglioli is laid before just the kind of people who should appreciate most his deliciously sordid characters and magnificent, almost Shakespearian turn of phrase. Incidentally, there's a prequel to the Mortdechai trilogy, set in the nineteenth century, which is as good (if not better) called "All The Tea In China", which was available briefly in paperback around 1998-99, but I fear is now sadly out of print. | |
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