This  was an unexpected pleasure.  The writing is tight and the characters well-drawn.  The main character has died many years ago -or did he?  His daughter and lover mourn his loss still. His fans want to call him from the dead through ceremonies that recall druidcial practice.  And then there is a mysterious and malevolent secret society.

My thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury USA, a division of Bloomsbury Publishing for providing an advanced digital copy of A Shot in the Dark by Lynne Truss. While it is classified as a mystery, I found it to belong more in the humor category. The mystery as it exists is secondary to the story itself, as told by the unseen author.

Throughout the book the author is a strong presence, becoming almost a character in the story itself through use of parentheticals and conversational tendencies that read as if someone is talking to the reader directly as they might relate an occurance or tell a story. There is a strong  feeling of being in a room with the author, perhaps as a stand-up comedy routine is being delivered.

Throughout the book, the impression is that the characters are the author’s concept of Keystone Cops types of figures who bumble through their day with total lack of intelligence and foresight. While there seems to be a strong desire to create humor within the pages, it fell flat for me and bordered on being far to predictable to be funny.

The primary characters are three policemen, the charwoman who cleans the police station for them, and a multitude of other characters who have some part to play in the murder as either perpetrators, victims, or bystanders. There are two mysteries throughout the book, one of which is alluded to from the beginning and the other that takes over half the book to take place and is a subplot of the first. The author moves the characters around from place to place, at times telling the reader that is what is being done, to the extent the author almost becomes more vivid than the characters in the story.

In the acknowledgements section at the end of the book, the author indicates these characters have a pre-history as characters on a radio show. This may explain much about the writing style within the story and why it reads as if it is a script as opposed to an actual novel. For me, it read as though it were a lengthy joke where I was waiting for the punchline, but that never really came. Humor is a highly personal thing, so while this didn’t work for me, there may be others who find it hilarious. I am being deliberately light on details so that anyone who chooses to read the book does not have any of it spoiled by having information in advance of when it was intended to be delivered.