Cover Image: Psycho by the Sea

Psycho by the Sea

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Psycho by the Sea is the fourth book of a procedural mystery series set in 1950's Brighton. Based on Lynne Truss' BBC Radio 4 series with some of the same characters, this novelization is a decidedly odd & farcical lampooning of post-WW2 police procedurals. Released 9th Nov 2021 by Bloomsbury on their Raven imprint, it's 320 pages and available in hardcover, ebook and audio formats. Paperback format out in August 2022.

The author has an unerring ear for dialogue and setting. The book really reads exactly like it was written contemporaneously for the time in which it's set. The pacing is superb and it moves along at a good clip. I never found my interest flagging. Ms. Truss has a deft touch with characterizations (she's been writing these characters for a while for audio plays, and it shows). There's a decidedly "keystone cops" element to the characterisations, with the lead policemen being naive and/or dim, whilst the criminal elements of Brighton attempt to exterminate one another with one of the chief underworld bosses actually working in the police department facility as a charwoman.

That being said... for an almost cozy read, there is a prodigious amount of violence (much of it gratuitous). People are constantly being stabbed, bashed with rocks, shot, throttled, run over, and otherwise mutilated. There is a disconcerting amount of *glee* in the descriptions.

The language is way over the top. The violence is omnipresent. I personally loved the denouement, but readers who need everything to be tied up in a neat bow with the good guys the unequivocal winners by page 298 are going to be driven mad by the end.

Four stars. Worth a read, but definitely different. Not a cozy, and not precisely a procedural.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

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Lynne Truss is hilarious, but with this fourth installment of the Constable Twitten series, she has outdone herself. My thanks go to Net Galley and Bloomsbury for the review copy. This book is riotously funny, and it’s for sale now.

Truss first came on my radar with her monstrously successful nonfiction grammar primer, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. A decade later I began reviewing, and one of my first reviews was for Cat Out of Hell, and later, the first in the Constable Twitten series, A Shot in the Dark, followed by the second, The Man That Got Away. I somehow missed the review copy for the third, Murder by Milk Bottle, which I discovered when I received the review copy for this fourth in the series; after sulking for a bit, I took myself to Seattle Bibliocommons and checked it out so that I’d be up to date when I began reading this one. It proved to be a good idea.

I tell you all this so you’ll see why I thought I had this author figured out. She had proven to have a distinctive, rather odd fiction writing style, which began in a sort of corny, groaning, oh-my-God-is-this-the-best-you-can-do style, but then sneakily grew better and funnier until by the second half, I’d be laughing my butt off. So as I open Psycho by the Sea, I have fortified myself to give Truss a minute or two to warm up. It will be funny, I am sure, but probably not just yet.

Surprise! This time, Truss had me laughing right out of the gate.

For the uninitiated, this satirical series is set in Brighton, a coastal resort town in England, in the 1950s. Our protagonist, Constable Twitten, is brilliant but irritating. He joins a small force that consists of Chief Inspector Steine, who has, until recently, been more interested in boosting tourism by pretending that Brighton has no crime, than in breaking up the formidable organized crime gang that runs amok, than in solving any of the crimes that have been committed. That was true until the last installment, when he inadvertently covered himself in glory and is now basking in the limelight, some of it literal as he is invited to speak on television or receive yet another award for his cleverness and courage. We also have Sergeant Brunswick, who would solve crimes gladly if he weren’t so everlastingly stupid; instead, he yearns to go undercover, even when there is no earthly purpose in it; when he does, he always manages to be shot in the leg at least once.

By now the readers know that the cleaning lady in charge of the station is a criminal mastermind. Mrs. Groynes is part cleaner, part den mother, and part overlord, and she makes herself loved and indispensable by showing up with cake, providing constant cups of tea, and listening to the cops to make sure that her operation is nowhere close to being discovered. In the first of the series, Twitten discovers what Groynes has been up to, but not a single, solitary cop or civilian will believe him. He’s new, after all, and they’ve known Palmyra Groynes forever. Mrs. Groynes, a crime lord? Don’t be ridiculous!

Now it seems that Palmyra has a competitor, someone that wants her turf and is willing to mow down her operatives in order to take it. I never would have seen this coming, and it’s an ingenious development. Old characters come back, and a new one, a formidable secretary sent down from London, turns the cop shop into a much more legitimate enterprise, and also sends Groynes packing. Even Twitten wants her back.

My favorite moment is when Twitten is being held at gunpoint, and he is so pedantic and obnoxious that he bores his assailant out of shooting him.

Not only does this book hit my funny bone right away, it also features a more complex, well balanced plot, and more character development. Until now, I had assumed no real character development was being attempted, because it’s satire, satire, satire, but now, it appears one can do both, and Truss does both bally splendidly.
“Flipping hedgehogs!” You have to get this book, but it will be more enjoyable if you read the other three first. Highly recommended.

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This book is too manic for me and I could not get into it. I had read the previous book in the series and that was a bit better. This book just tried too hard but failed. DNF

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This funny, quirky anglophile mystery is set in 1957 Brighton.

The police force is inept, aside from its most junior member, young Constable Twitten.

Their charlady, Mrs. Palmeira Groynes, is a criminal mastermind, responsible for large scale murder and mayhem.

The plot hops all over the place, and is tons of fun to follow, as both Twitten's boss Steine and Mrs. Groynes are threatened.

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Another very fun read in the series in which major threads from the previous three novels come together in a satisfying incident in which French onion sellers play a pivotal role! Ms. Truss's writing continues to delight me, and she can craft a multilevel criminal endeavor with the best of them. A super strong recommend, as the series goes from strength to strength, but could be slightly confusing (or maybe not?) if the reader is visiting Constable Twitten's Brighton for the first time.

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Constable Twitten and charwoman/criminal mastermind Mrs. Groynes are both trying to determine what is causing the multitude of recent murders in their sleepy southern English town in Psycho by the Sea.

When Mrs. G was running things, messy murder victims weren’t filling the morgue. But now one of her chief lieutenants is missing, her latest scheme has been uncovered, and a new ultra-efficient secretary has forced her to quit her charwoman job at the police station. Someone has it out for her—but who?

I love the deceptively slow backwater mysteries in this series. While the 1950s setting is excellent, the mystery in this book, is especially convoluted. I also adore the characters and their gently comical interactions. If you are looking for a humorously bumbling police procedural, look no further than Psycho by the Sea. 4 stars!

Thanks to Raven Books, Bloomsbury USA, and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

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All is not well in Brighton. Inspector Steine has a criminally insane murderer of policemen after him, a visiting professor has been murdered at a department store, and worse, Mrs Groynes, charlady and gang leader, has been booted from the police department by the new police secretary.

This book is utterly hilarious and made me laugh out loud quite a bit. The characters are endearing though rather bumbling - as the reader is told more or less from the beginning who the villains are, I did spend a lot of time wondering how the twain would meet! There were some really hilarious sequences and asides that I enjoyed, such as the relationship between the governor of Broadmoor and his 'Carlotta'.

Though the author does a good job explaining events of the previous books, this one's plot heavily relies on characters introduced before, so it was a bit of a tricky read at times. I did also think that the plot might have been too complex for the length of the book - consequently, events like the professor's murder get short shrift.

Ultimately an enjoyable darkly comic romp, perhaps more for fans of comedy than of mysteries.

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Another wonderful book in the series ,full of quirky characters a well written storyline..This is a unique series and I have enjoyed each book.#netgalley #bloomsbury

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"In the latest installment of this charming and quirky series, a trio of detectives are faced with the arrival of an escaped criminal with an unlikely penchant for boiling the heads of policemen.

It's September in the British beach town of Brighton, and the city is playing host to weeks of endless rain and some brand new villains.

A trusted member of a local gang has disappeared part way through planning a huge heist; a violent criminal obsessed with boiling the heads of policemen has escaped a local prison, and at Gosling's department store an American researcher has been found dead in the music section.

Inspector Steine has other things on his mind - since the triumphant conclusion to his last case, Steine has so many awards and invitations coming his way that he has had to take on a secretary - but Sergeant Brunswick and Constable 'Clever Clogs' Twitten are both on the case. If only they could work out just who is behind these dastardly acts..."

I am ALL about crime in Brighton right now!

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I received an ARC of Psycho by the sea through NetGalley.

I requested this book expecting it to be a cozy mystery. I was mistaken, it’s more of a police procedural. You know from the begging who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. There isn’t really a big twist or anything, you’re just waiting to see whether or not the bad guys get away with it. It’s about a police informant who goes missing, and a bunch of other stuff. There were too many things happening. I love when a mystery has a lot going on, not just a one and done murder, but slowly builds the mystery with higher and higher stakes. This wasn’t how Psycho by the Sea went though. Rather than starting with a small event and building, it had all the events happen at once. And we don’t know that they’re connected so it just feels disjointed and hard to keep track of.

This book is fourth in a series, and I haven’t read the first three. My ARC came with a brief introduction to the returning characters but, it still took a while for me to get familiar with them. One thing that confused me was that despite the series being listed as the Constable Twitten series, his presence was no greater than the other detectives. So why is his name on the cover and not the others? I also gotta say I’m a little confused by the title. I’m pretty sure who the “psycho” of the novel is, but I don’t recall a single mention of the sea or ocean in the text. With “the Sea” being in the title I thought it would have played a more significant role in the story.

I’m not normally one to knock a book for using profanity, I believe that since vulgar language is common in reality, it’s only natural for books to reflect that. However, they said “bally” way too bally much in this book. I’d never even heard that one before, and the word itself doesn’t offend me, but the fact that it was used 67 times is egregious. I get wanting to use language ticks to portray personality, but this was just way too much bally.

So far this reads like a pretty negative review, but I did not dislike it! One of the expectations of NetGalley is that I provide an honest review, and these are my honest opinions. It was a fine book, and I enjoyed some of the characters. The late-night conversations between Twitten and Mrs G were fun, and the axe-wielding cop-killer brought some excellent color to the story, even if those colors were black and white! This isn’t my preferred sub-genre of mystery, but if you’re a fan of police procedurals then Psycho by the Sea has a lot to offer.

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Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury USA for providing me with an advanced copy of Psycho By The Sea.
I felt a little lost when I started this book. I thought I was getting into a mystery/thriller more than a cheeky comedy and it was definitely the latter. Not having read the first books in the series, it took me a bit of time to get into it, though it does stand alone.
The book follows a police department trying to catch a killer that has recently escaped and is threatening one of their own.
I've never read a book quite like this. The main plot is mostly a set up for the witty banter and silliness happening in the police department. There certainly isn't a clear demarcation between who the good guys are and who the bad guys are and at times, you find yourself wondering for which side you should be rooting.
Lynne Truss has developed a cast of quirky and charming characters that are often inept, but their ineptitude is sometimes so great that it also works in their favor.
Though the sense of humor was not for me, it was clever and would probably be enjoyed by many.
If you like witty comedy and banter and are more into quirky, funny stories than thrills and chills, pick up a copy of Psycho By The Sea, being published November 9th, 2021..

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After reading up on the previous novel, I'm glad that I did. This is a wonderfully written story with characters that I could imagine vividly. This story is like no other I've read before. At first, I found myself confused on the story because I had not read the previous book. But after doing so made me appreciate this one so much more. I highly recommend this book to someone who loves a good detective mystery with a good villain arc, I suggest picking this one up.

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Psycho by the Sea is the latest in this established series. With the quirky characters that you already know and enjoy, a new mystery will keep you entertained.

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