The Anglo-Irish murders - Ruth Dudley Edwards

The fifth in Ruth Dudley Edwards's wickedly funny series taking an irreverent look at the British Establishment: 'A Fragonard to the Hieronymus Bosch of the grittier writers' The Times Foolishly, the British and Irish governments have chosen the tactless and impatient Baroness Troutbeck to chair a conference on Anglo-Irish cultural sensitivities. She instantly press-gangs Robert Amiss, her young friend and reluctant accomplice, into becoming conference organizer. Despite their diverting encounters as they career through Ireland en route to Moycoole Castle in County Mayo, Amiss is in near-despair as the arrangements crumble around his ears. The interested parties -- particularly nationalists and unionists from Northern Ireland and civil servants from Dublin and London -- seem intent on living up to their worst stereotypes. A truculent Orangeman, intransigent republicans, imitative loyalists, appeasing English and hypocritical Irish are among the nightmarish participants whose arrival Amiss views with dread. And driving rain and security problems make everything worse. It is a conference to remember in more ways than one.;When a delegate plummets off the battlements, no one, not even the authorities, can decide whether it was by accident or design. The next death poses the same problem and causes warring factions to accuse each other of murder even as the politicians are busily trying to brush everything under the carpet in the name of peace. The latest in Ruth Dudley Edwards's wickedly funny series of crime novels taking an irreverent look at the Establishment.