Rancid Pansies
Gerald Samper, an irrepressible Brit with a penchant for witty anagrams and dubious cuisine, returns in this third installment of Hamilton-Paterson’s rib-tickling series (after Amazing Disgrace, 2006.) As the novel opens, Samper is recovering from the devastation of his Tuscan villa (which plummeted into a ravine during a party) at the home of a composer friend in England. It’s not long before he subjects dinner guests to one of his gastronomic concoctions with abominable abdominal results (field mouse vol-au-vent anyone?). Disgraced, he returns to Italy to find that his former residence has become a shrine to the late Princess Diana, whose spirit is rumored to have saved the lives of Samper and his guests on the evening the villa fell from grace. Samper is determined to make the most of the blessed mayhem by writing the libretto for an opera that’s sure to create a royal flush. Quips and letter-perfect wordplay pepper this playful entry, whose returning characters include a one-armed yachtswoman and an Eastern European émigré whose gut-curdling culinary repertoire almost makes Samper’s taste seem tame. --Allison Block