Inspector Hobbes and the Bones - Wilkie Martin

   2017; 345 pages.  Book 4 (out of 5) in the “Unhuman” series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Dark Humor; Paranormal Fiction; Humorous British Detective Cozy Mystery Fantasy.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

 

    Life is tough right now for Andy Caplet.

 

    His wife Daphne has left him.  Okay, not permanently, but to go on an archaeological expedition in Egypt.  Who knows how long she’ll be gone?

 

    But the other things are a bit more mysterious.  Some stranger walking past him just punched Andy in the nose for no discernible reason.  Then a passing car almost ran him over, and still later somebody shot him in a most sensitive area with an air rifle.  Talk about having a bad day.

 

    Maybe these things are all just a bunch of coincidences.  Maybe not.  Maybe it has to do with that less-than-glowing restaurant review Andy wrote in the newspaper that he works for.  Chefs can be hypersensitive about and criticism of their dishes.

 

    About the only good thing that happened to him so far today was a ravishing blonde named Sally who came on to him right after he was almost run over.  Sexy young women rarely do that to Andy.  True, he’s a married man now, but Daphne is far away in Egypt.  Sally has just invited him to lunch, and since nothing will come of it, so why shouldn't Andy accept?

 

    Be sure to smile for the camera, Andy.

 

What’s To Like...

    Inspector Hobbes and the Bones is the fourth book in Wilkie Martin’s “Unhuman” series, which I'm reading in order.  Daphne’s extended absence allows Andy to once again play Dr. Watson to Inspector Hobbes’s Sherlock Holmes in another paranormal whodunit full of scary not-so-humans,  charming wit, and groan-worthy puns.

 

    The plot structure will be familiar to readers of this series: we start with a simple case of who-or-what killed Skeleton Bob’s pet pig, and things quickly get more complicated and weird for our sleuthing duo.  Andy is always two steps behind Hobbes in the investigation, but in the end serves a crucial, if unwilling, part in the solving of the case.  It all may be formulaic, but I quite like the formula.

 

    Once again, I learned all sorts of British terms that somehow didn’t make it across the pond: bollocking, budging up, wellies, wotcha, holdall, snogging, doxy, a gippy tummy, a plastic wheelie bin, and lots more. Then there are the alternate spellings: pyjamas, sceptical, foetid, kerb, maths, and many others.  Who says English isn't a foreign language?

 

    I also enjoyed being immersed in English culture.  The English breakfasts are a true gustatory delight; I’ve had them a couple times while over there.  Hobbes is a Cryptic Crossword fan; so am I.  And I chuckled at the different views as to what is “recent” and what is “ancient”.  In England, something from the Middle Ages is recent history; in America anything even 100 years old is ancient.

 

    The story is told in the first-person POV, Andy’s, and is set in and around the fictional Cotswold village of Sorenchester.  There’s a nice mix of paranormal critters, some recurring, others new, and most of which are not precisely identified by unhuman type (another formulaic trait of this series).  This is a cozy mystery: there's no R-rated stuff, a minimum of violence, and only about a dozen mild cusswords in the entire book.

 

    The ending is okay, but not spectacular.  Andy, Hobbes, and Billy the Dwarf combine to save the day, although Andy (and therefore the reader) somehow misses all the excitement.  The last chapter serves as an epilogue, tying up the usual plethora of secondary plot threads, including the boar, the embarrassing photos, Mimi, and the unruly rugby players.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Bespoke (adj.) : made for a particular customer or user.

Others: Wittering (v.); Wendigo (n.); Hoik (v.); Wazzock (n.); Scrag (v.); Yomping (v., a Britishism).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 424 ratings.

    Goodreads: 4.18/5 based on 1,283 ratings and 122 reviews

 

 Excerpts...

    “Do you know anything about her?”

    “Not a great deal, dear.  She brought a lot of bother to the old fellow a few years ago.  I gather she was something of a man-eater.”

    “Do you mean she fancied him?”  I’d always struggled to believe any woman, or at least any human woman, could have the hots for Hobbes.  There was just something too feral about him.  Besides, not even his mother would have considered him good-looking, though, in fairness, there was a rough gallantry about him.

    “No.  She ate men.  Really.  Well, bits of them.  Perhaps she was more of a man-taster.”  (loc. 2316)

 

    “You may well be right about this being their accommodation.”

    “Thanks, but … umm … thinking about it again, I’m not so sure.  She, Hilda that is, was really smartly dressed, at least I think she was, and she didn’t look like she’d been sleeping in a hut.”

    Hobbes shrugged.  “If she’s what I suspect she is, she could easily appear smart to one such as you.”

    “What d’you mean ‘one such as me’?”  (loc. 3161)

 

Kindle Details…

    Inspector Hobbes and the Bones is priced at $4.99 at Amazon right now, the same as for Books 2 and 3.   Book 1 costs only $2.99, so does the newly-released fifth book, Inspector Hobbes and the Common People, which I snatched up during a much-appreciated “pre-release” special.

 

Her distrust and dislike had multiplied after I accidently hit her in the face with a dead rat.  (loc. 1044)

    I enjoyed Inspector Hobbes and the Bones, but did find some things to nitpick about.

 

    While the pacing is pleasingly brisk – Andy never seems to run out of ways to get himself in trouble – it did feel like a lot of time was spent on inconsequential tangents.  The boar investigation and Daphne’s archaeological journey both chewed up a lot of pages, but the former seemed to be nothing more than a distraction, and the latter felt like it was only there to give Andy an excuse to move in with Hobbes and Mrs. Goodfellow for a while.

 

    To boot, we really make no progress in learning exactly what sort of otherworldly creature Hobbes and some of the secondary characters are, including the main baddies.  Yes, Hobbes certainly exhibits werewolf traits.  But is he really one?  If so, how did he get that way, how many centuries old is he, and does he have a hairy, lupine Achilles’ heel?  Ditto for the creatures called “the sly ones”, the wendigos, and Stillingham stilthounds.  Inquiring minds want more details about the various beasties, even if things are revealed bit by bit, and book by book.

 

    But I pick at nits.  The emphasis in the Unhuman series is on Andy’s antics, Hobbes’s hunches, and the abundance of wit and ha-has that Wilkie Martin manages to work into each tale.  The series' target audience isn’t so much the lovers of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, as it is the lovers of Terry Pratchett's Rincewind.

 

    7½ Stars.  The first three e-books in this series all came out within a 12-month period in 2013-14.  Then there was a 2-year lag before this one was published.  The gap between Books 4 and 5 was even wider: 4½ years.  This makes me wonder:  has Wilkie Martin grown tired of writing this series, the way Arthur Conan Doyle grew tired of penning Sherlock Holmes tales?  Let's hope not.