Where the book was from:- My own copy (although I bought the hardback for my collection I read it on the Kindle so as to be able to have the font bigger while my eyes were bad).
ISBN: - 978 0385619264
Pages: - 378pp
Genre: - Fantasy
Location:- Discworld
How I came across it: - I never miss reading a new Pratchett
Rating: - ***** *****
One sentence summary:- The 39th Discworld novel sees Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch slightly out of his depth as he holidays in the innocent countryside.
Describe the plot without giving anything away:- Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is on holiday in the pleasant and innocent countryside, but not for him a mere body in the wardrobe. There are many, many bodies and an ancient crime more terrible than murder. He is out of his jurisdiction, out of his depth, out of bacon sandwiches, and occasionally snookered and out of his mind, but never out of guile. Where there is a crime there must be a finding, there must be a chase and there must be a punishment. They say that in the end all sins are forgiven. But not quite all...
General comments:- Probably the best Discworld novel for a while.
Quotations:-
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a policeman taking a holiday will barely have time to open his suitcase before he finds his first corpse.
Ramkin Hall... Apparently it had a mile of trout stream and, Vimes seemed to recall from the deeds, a pub. Vimes knew how you could own a pub but he wondered how you could own a trout stream because, if that was your bit, it had already gurgled off downstream while you were watching it, yes? That meant somebody else was now fishing in your water, the bastard!
...weather as cold as charity and rain coming down so fast it had to queue up to
hit the ground.
And so he grinned and bore it while they fluttered around him like large moths, and he waved away yet more teacakes, and cups of tea that would have been welcome were it not that they looked and tasted like what proper tea turns into shortly after you drink it.
And now, if you will excuse me, I’m going down to the pub.’ Automatically, his wife said, ‘No, dear, you know drink doesn’t agree with you.’ The colonel was all smiles. ‘This evening I intend to settle my differences with drink and make it my friend.’
Of course, the white marble lovelies were dignified with urns, bunches of marble grapes, and the ever-popular length of gauze which had, happily, landed in just the right place to stop art becoming pornography.
Thus satisfied, he waited for the onset of sleep, against a chorus of howls, shrieks, mysterious distant bangs, surreptitious rustlings, screeches, disconcerting ticking noises, dreadful scratching sounds, terrible flappings of wings very close, and all the rest of the unholy orchestra that is known as the peace of the countryside.
AUTHOR Notes:- See Nation
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