After the notorious `Middle Street Massacre' of 1951, when the majority of Brighton's criminals wiped one another out in a vicious battle as the local police force enjoyed a brief stop en route for an ice cream, Inspector Steine rather enjoys life as a policeman. No criminals, no crime, no stress. He just wishes Sergeant Brunswick would stop insisting that perhaps not every criminal was wiped out that fateful day. So it's really rather annoying when an ambitious - not to mention irritating - new Constable shows up to work and starts investigating a series of burglaries. And it's even more annoying when, after Constable Twitten is despatched to the theatre for the night, he sits next to a vicious theatre critic who is promptly shot dead part way through the opening night of a new play. It seems Brighton may be in need of a police force after all...
In 2002 Lynne Truss presented Cutting a Dash, a well-received BBC Radio 4 series about punctuation, which led to the writing of Eats, Shoots & Leaves. The book became a runaway success in the UK, hitting number one on the bestseller lists and prompting extraordinary headlines such as Grammar Book Tops Bestseller List (BBC News). With more than 500,000 copies of her book in print in her native England, Lynne Truss is ready to rally the troops on this side of the pond with her rousing cry, Sticklers unite!Through sloppy usage and low standards on the Internet, in e-mail, and now text messages, we have made proper punctuation an endangered species. In Eats, Shoots & Leaves, former editor Lynne Truss dares to say, in her delightfully urbane, witty and very English way, that it is time to look at our commas and semicolons and see them as the wonderful and necessary things they are. If there are only pedants left who care, then so be it. This is a book for people who love punctuation and get upset when it is mishandled. From George Orwell shunning the semicolon, to New Yorker editor Harold Ross's epic arguments with James Thurber over commas, this lively history makes a powerful case for the preservation of a system of printing conventions that is much too subtle to be mucked about with. From the Compact Disc edition.
The "Queen of Zero Tolerance" and "New York Times" bestselling author of "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" takes on the sorry state of modern manners, looking at the "utter bloody rudeness" of the world today while offering six good reasons to stay home.
From the bestselling author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves, a hilarious new book from Lynne Truss about her strange journey through the world of sport and sports journalism.
During her time at the newspaper she faced disdain from fellow sports writers; undertook last-minute, pre-fight research into 'The Rumble in the Jungle' (Muhammad Ali won, surprisingly); tried unsuccessfully to interpret bizarre commentary and memorize results statistics; wept at football matches and discovered a lasting love for golf. She was even nominated for Sports Writer of the Year.
Get Her Off the Pitch! is the hilarious, perceptive and at times moving account of those four strange years. It is perfect for those for whom sport is a matter of life and death, for those who have no idea what all the fuss is about - and for everyone in between.
Here, in Lynne Truss' first novel, we meet Osborne Lonsdale, a down-at-heel journalist, mysteriously attractive to women, who writes a regular celebrity interview for Come Into the Garden. This week his "Me and My Shed" column will be based on the charming garden outhouse owned by TV sitcom star Angela Farmer. Unbeknownst to Osborne, driving down to Devon to interview Angela in her country retreat, the sleepy magazine has been taken over by new management. And so Osborne's research trip is interrupted by a trainload of anxious hacks from London-Lillian the fluffy blonde secretary, Michelle the sub-editor who has a secret crush on Osborne, and Trent Carmichael, crime novelist and bestselling author of S is for Secateurs!
A cottage on the coast on a windy evening. Under a pool of yellow light, two figures face each other across a kitchen table. A man and a cat. The story about to be related is so unusual yet so terrifyingly plausible that it demands to be told in a single sitting. The man clears his throat, and leans forward, expectant. 'Shall we begin?' says the cat... 'A truly inventive comic writer' IRISH TIMES
When you are an inoffensive retired librarian with bitter personal experience of Evil Talking Cats, do you rescue a kitten from the cold on a December night? Do you follow up news items about cats digging in graveyards? Do you inquire into long-ago cats who voyaged around the world with Captain Cook? Well, yes. If you are Alec Charlesworth that is precisely what you do - with unexpected and terrifying consequences.
Lynne Truss debuted in America as a guffaw-inducing grammarian, but her UK audience has known her for years as a critically acclaimed novelist. Tennyson's Gift is an imaginative cocktail of Victorian seriousness and farce that re-imagines the world of the nineteenth-century English poet laureate, placing him in the midst of eccentric company that includes Lewis Carroll. Going Loco features a critic trying to write a definitive account of the doppelganger in gothic fiction, amidst the chaos of her domestic life, including paranoia that her cleaning lady is taking over her life. These two works will delight the hordes of Truss fans who made Eats, Shoots & Leaves such a spectacular bestseller.
1957: In the beach town of Brighton, music is playing and guests are sunning themselves, when a young man is found dead, dripping blood, in a deck chair. Constable Twitten of the Brighton Police Force has a hunch that the fiendish murder may be connected to a notorious nightspot, but his captain and his colleagues are-as ever-busy with other more important issues. Inspector Steine is being conned into paying for the honor of being featured at the Museum of Wax, and Sergeant Brunswick is trying (and failing) to get the attention of the distraught Brighton Belles who found the body. As the case twists and turns, Constable Twitten must find the murderer and convince his colleagues that there's an evil mastermind behind Brighton's climbing crime rate.
Our incomparable team of detectives are back for another outing in the second installment of Lynne Truss's joyfully quirky crime series.
Constable Twitten takes over the narrative in this third series of Lynne Truss' seaside comedy about celebrity policeman, Inspector Steine. Back from an attachment at Scotland Yard, Twitten finds Brunswick more depressed than ever about villainy in Brighton. To cheer him up, Twitten persuades Brunswick's favourite writer, Harry Jupiter, crime reporter on the Daily Clarion, to interview Brunswick for a feature on the ordinary heroic policeman. Brunswick is jubilant - it is finally his day. But, when Inspector Steine takes Jupiter to Brighton Pier, disaster ensues and Brunswick's euphoria turns to unmitigated rage. Does Brunswick really want to murder Inspector Steine and can Twitten and Mrs Groynes do anything to stop him? Find out in 'The Adventures of Inspector Steine', starring Michael Fenton Stevens, Samantha Spiro, John Ramm and Matt Green with guest appearances from Philip Jackson, Adrian Bower, Janet Ellis and Douglas Hodge. 'Delicious fun' - Sunday Times Culture Magazine
The second series of Lynne Truss's hugely popular BBC Radio 4 comedy thriller. Inspector Steine, the amiable, unworldly detective who refuses to believe in Brighton's criminal underworld, returns for another six episodes. It is 1957 and, as the series opens, all crime has stopped along the South Coast. But Mrs Groynes - the cockney charlady who is actually a criminal mastermind - is desperate to get back in business, and a performance at the Hippodrome gives her an idea. A day out in a vintage car turns out to be highly eventful, and Brunswick is kept busy organising a police open day featuring a range of criminal exhibits and going undercover as a careers master in a girls' school. Meanwhile, Steine meets the mysterious Lord Melamine - and finds his life in danger... Michael Fenton Stevens stars as Inspector Steine, with guest performances from Janet Ellis, Nicholas Le Provost and Mark Heap.'Delicious fun' - Sunday Times Culture Magazine
The first series of Lynne Truss's hugely popular BBC Radio 4 comedy thriller set in 1950s Brighton. Brighton in the 1950s: a place of knickerbocker glories, end-of-the pier shows... and an enormous amount of unsolved crime. Step forward Inspector Steine. Naive and innocent, he believes that he wiped out all the villains at a single stroke in the Middle Street Massacre when seventeen local hoodlums gunned each other to death. Fortunately, long-suffering Sergeant Brunswick is at hand to help Steine with his enquiries. Aided by keen Constable Twitten, they must find the criminal mastermind who is operating undetected in their midst. In these six episodes, a headless corpse is found on the Palace Pier ghost train; a foppish London theatre critic is found dead after a performance of a kitchen-sink drama; and the Inspector decides to go undercover at the Black Cat Casino - while a robbery takes place in the bank next door to the police station. In addition, Ventriloquist Vince receives threats after moving his booth to a new pitch; Steine falls in love with Adelaide Vine, the beautiful owner of a fish and chip shop; and ponders how to celebrate the five-year anniversary of the Middle Street Massacre, unaware that a deranged criminal has escaped from Broadmoor with revenge on his lips... Starring Michael Fenton Stevens as Steine and Jan Ravens as Mrs Groynes, this perfectly-judged blend of humour, nostalgia and mystery from bestselling author Lynne Truss makes for an irresistible listen. 'Delicious fun' - Sunday Times Culture Magazine
