The Simon Bognor Mysteries Series

In the dullest town in England, Bognor becomes enmeshed in a civic club murder English politicians love to prattle on about the honest mettle of towns like Scarpington—mid-sized cities full of ugly buildings, ugly people, and a surfeit of wholesome values. In hopes of learning more about just what the nation’s heartland is up to, the Board of Trade orders special investigator Simon Bognor to relocate to Scarpington and not to return until he knows what makes the place tick. It does not take long for him to find the answer. Like everywhere else he’s ever visited, Scarpington runs on a toxic mixture of greed, sex, and murder. Bognor is sitting in on the meeting of the local Artisans’ Lodge when the keynote speaker keels over dead. Bognor has seen enough murder to know it on sight. As he looks for the culprit, he discovers dark secrets beneath Scarpington’s homely facade—and a civic character that would horrify even the most depraved of politicians.

Along the canals of Venice, Bognor investigates a mogul’s medieval murder Flush with cash from the success of his latest insipid blockbuster, aspiring film mogul Irving Silverburger takes to Venice to soak himself in luxury. Instead, he is quickly soaked in blood. Cruising down the canal in a vaporetto, Silverburger is shot with a crossbow, killed by a Harlequin who disappears into the masquerade of Carnival. Unmasking the disguised assassin falls to Simon Bognor, a British Board of Trade detective whose natural sloth did not prevent him from stumbling backward into knighthood—an honor that fits just as poorly as his ill-tailored clothes. If he ever had a prime, he is long past it now, but Bognor must rally once more to penetrate the mysteries of an ancient city at festival time, when the killers are not the only ones in disguise.

After a boozy Oxford reunion, Bognor is distressed to learn one of his classmates is a killer Nothing depresses Simon Bognor like a university reunion. Every pimply-faced boy he knew two decades prior has made something of himself, while Bognor languishes at the Board of Trade, muddling along in an investigatory position for which he is hideously unqualified. Although more often than not his job requires catching murderers, he lacks even the observational powers to notice when the head of his old college has been poisoned. Both quite drunk, they totter off to their respective beds. Bognor makes it, but the master doesn’t—he collapses dead at the top of the stairs. Due to the dead man’s ties to the government, Bognor is asked to sort out who did him in. At long last he has the opportunity to prove himself at his old college—but Bognor knows it is just as likely that he will end up in the dunce’s cap.  

When a restaurateur dies suspiciously, Bognor is forced to eat his way to the truth Dinner service is over, the staff has left, and Escoffier Savarin Smith is about to tuck into a couple of bottles of champagne. He seals the windows with electrical tape, fiddles with a canister of gas, and begins to drink. When his staff arrives the next morning to open the restaurant, the champagne is drunk, the air has been poisoned, and the greatest chef in England is dead—seemingly by his own hand.  For Board of Trade investigator Simon Bognor, this is a crushing blow. Although he moves through life in a permanent state of near-bafflement, Bognor knows his way around a restaurant, and Smith’s was the finest in Britain. It was also a clearinghouse for international espionage, which may have led to the chef’s peculiar demise. Although usually hesitant to put himself in danger, for once Bognor is unafraid. After all, there are great meals at stake.

A poisoned poodle drags Bognor into the high-stakes world of international dog smuggling Whately Wonderful is taking himself on his morning walk when he spies the slab of sirloin. An exceptionally well-bred poodle, he knows there is something odd about the great hunk of meat, but temptation overwhelms him. Just a few minutes after he gobbles up the suspicious steak, Whately is dead, and the world of British dog breeding will never be the same. Board of Trade investigator Simon Bognor hates dogs nearly as much as he hates their owners, and he doesn’t particularly care who killed the prize poodle. But his superiors have seen evidence of an international dog-smuggling ring, and they believe Whately’s death was connected to it. For the sake of Britain, Bognor begrudgingly agrees to look into the case of the murdered mutt, fully aware that by poking his muzzle into other people’s business, he is inviting himself to be put down.

For the sake of honey, Bognor investigates a cabal of treasonous monks As the friars of the abbey gather for group prayer, Brother Luke stays in the garden. His tardiness is not due to an overenthusiasm for his potatoes, but to the fact that he is lying facedown in the dirt, strangled to death by his own crucifix. For Simon Bognor, this will prove inconvenient. A special investigator attached to the British Board of Trade, Bognor knows that Brother Luke was an undercover agent, come to look into charges of national agriculture secrets being smuggled across the Iron Curtain in jars of the abbey’s famous honey. Someone killed to protect the apiary espionage, and Bognor assumes with irritation that whoever did it will kill again. A portly desk jockey with a bad eye for detail and no experience with danger in the field, Bognor approaches the abbey hesitantly, certain that among these lambs of God lurks a wolf with a taste for blood.

An ancient country custom goes awry, killing a man and spoiling Bognor’s holiday At the annual Clout, the men of Herring do as they have done for centuries, firing arrows blindly into the woods and allowing their women to retrieve what they have shot. Nobody ever kills anything, but it’s a jolly time nonetheless—until the day when a few of the arrows find their mark, pinning a wayward customs inspector to a tree in a bloody parody of Saint Sebastian. It’s rotten luck for the dead man, and not much better for Simon Bognor. Bognor huffs when he hears of the killing, knowing that he is going to be sucked into investigating the death. A special inspector for the Board of Trade, Bognor is always getting invited to crime scenes, despite knowing almost nothing about crime. His bad lungs, sour attitude, and fleshy physique are out of place in the countryside, but Bognor is in for the duration. He will find the person who caused the accident—or the next arrow’s target could be his heart.  

To learn who killed a loathsome gossip columnist, Bognor joins the paper Staggering homeward from a banquet, St. John Derby decides it would be easier to stagger back to work instead. When he reaches his desk, the booze-addled gossip columnist treats himself to a massive tumbler of port and calls for a taxi. By the time the cab arrives, the port is spilled on the carpet, mingling with the blood leaking from Derby’s cut throat. No one will mourn his death.  Special investigator Simon Bognor is dispatched to get the scoop on who finished off the sodden old scribe. Journalism is not Bognor’s field—in fact, he can barely type—and the tame missives that pepper the paper’s gossip section strike him as too boring to kill for. But as he pokes around the daily newspaper’s offices, he finds quite the story indeed—one that will either land him on the front page, or among the obituaries.

Bognor braves the frost to discover who has murdered Canada’s richest man In his lavish private train car, Sir Roderick Farquhar draws a bath. When it has been filled to his satisfaction, the portly captain of industry tips in three drops of bath oil and lowers himself into the steam. Within seconds, the poison in the oil has stopped his heart and ruined Simon Bognor’s winter. A special investigator for Britain’s Board of Trade, Bognor makes the mistake of believing a Canadian friend’s assurances that Toronto is never cold in November. He is coatless and shivering when he learns the news about Farquhar, an unsavory businessman whom the Board of Trade had previously suspected of drug smuggling, identity fraud, and worse. Sir Roderick had ties to organized crime, pro-Nazi groups, and Amtrak, and Bognor will have to determine which faction poisoned the man’s bath—or shiver to death trying.

Bognor tries to understand how a publishing magnate could have been crushed by smut Before retiring for the night, Vernon Hemlock pours a brandy, lights a cigar, and takes a look at his cache of pornography. Far more than a wad of dirty magazines stashed under a mattress, this is a collection of some of the world’s finest erotica, dating back as far as a dirty doodle drawn by da Vinci. The millionaire publisher is perusing the Swedish section when the shelves begin to move. By the time he notices the walls closing in on him, it is too late. Vernon Hemlock has been flattened by filth. This would not normally bother Simon Bognor, but he fears it will be bad news for his book deal. A stridently lazy Board of Trade investigator, Bognor stumbled his way into a handshake deal with Hemlock to write a kind of memoir. With his publisher dead, Bognor has no choice but to find the man who squashed the king of porn and confront his own greatest fear: hard work.

Bognor tries to understand how a publishing magnate could have been crushed by smut Before retiring for the night, Vernon Hemlock pours a brandy, lights a cigar, and takes a look at his cache of pornography. Far more than a wad of dirty magazines stashed under a mattress, this is a collection of some of the world’s finest erotica, dating back as far as a dirty doodle drawn by da Vinci. The millionaire publisher is perusing the Swedish section when the shelves begin to move. By the time he notices the walls closing in on him, it is too late. Vernon Hemlock has been flattened by filth. This would not normally bother Simon Bognor, but he fears it will be bad news for his book deal. A stridently lazy Board of Trade investigator, Bognor stumbled his way into a handshake deal with Hemlock to write a kind of memoir. With his publisher dead, Bognor has no choice but to find the man who squashed the king of porn and confront his own greatest fear: hard work.

In the dullest town in England, Bognor becomes enmeshed in a civic club murder English politicians love to prattle on about the honest mettle of towns like Scarpington—mid-sized cities full of ugly buildings, ugly people, and a surfeit of wholesome values. In hopes of learning more about just what the nation’s heartland is up to, the Board of Trade orders special investigator Simon Bognor to relocate to Scarpington and not to return until he knows what makes the place tick. It does not take long for him to find the answer. Like everywhere else he’s ever visited, Scarpington runs on a toxic mixture of greed, sex, and murder. Bognor is sitting in on the meeting of the local Artisans’ Lodge when the keynote speaker keels over dead. Bognor has seen enough murder to know it on sight. As he looks for the culprit, he discovers dark secrets beneath Scarpington’s homely facade—and a civic character that would horrify even the most depraved of politicians.

At a for-profit ancestral pile, Bognor seeks an earl-killing sniper As real estate moguls slice and dice the great properties of the English countryside, the rambling grounds of Abney House are kept intact by being turned into a sort of theme park of the aristocracy for the public—complete with cafeteria, sailing museum, and safari-themed shooting gallery. But the theme isn’t complete until a visiting earl is felled by a sniper’s bullet, giving Abney House what every manor needs: a blue-blooded murder. Normally this killing would not fall under the jurisdiction of Board of Trade investigator Simon Bognor, but the downed earl was tied up in a top-secret international exchange, and the killing may have had a political motive. As Bognor settles into life at the old estate, he is forced to decide which will be more dangerous: the sharpshooting assassin, or the tedious aristocratic company.

At a for-profit ancestral pile, Bognor seeks an earl-killing sniper As real estate moguls slice and dice the great properties of the English countryside, the rambling grounds of Abney House are kept intact by being turned into a sort of theme park of the aristocracy for the public—complete with cafeteria, sailing museum, and safari-themed shooting gallery. But the theme isn’t complete until a visiting earl is felled by a sniper’s bullet, giving Abney House what every manor needs: a blue-blooded murder. Normally this killing would not fall under the jurisdiction of Board of Trade investigator Simon Bognor, but the downed earl was tied up in a top-secret international exchange, and the killing may have had a political motive. As Bognor settles into life at the old estate, he is forced to decide which will be more dangerous: the sharpshooting assassin, or the tedious aristocratic company.

To learn who killed a loathsome gossip columnist, Bognor joins the paper Staggering homeward from a banquet, St. John Derby decides it would be easier to stagger back to work instead. When he reaches his desk, the booze-addled gossip columnist treats himself to a massive tumbler of port and calls for a taxi. By the time the cab arrives, the port is spilled on the carpet, mingling with the blood leaking from Derby’s cut throat. No one will mourn his death.  Special investigator Simon Bognor is dispatched to get the scoop on who finished off the sodden old scribe. Journalism is not Bognor’s field—in fact, he can barely type—and the tame missives that pepper the paper’s gossip section strike him as too boring to kill for. But as he pokes around the daily newspaper’s offices, he finds quite the story indeed—one that will either land him on the front page, or among the obituaries.

An ancient country custom goes awry, killing a man and spoiling Bognor’s holiday At the annual Clout, the men of Herring do as they have done for centuries, firing arrows blindly into the woods and allowing their women to retrieve what they have shot. Nobody ever kills anything, but it’s a jolly time nonetheless—until the day when a few of the arrows find their mark, pinning a wayward customs inspector to a tree in a bloody parody of Saint Sebastian. It’s rotten luck for the dead man, and not much better for Simon Bognor. Bognor huffs when he hears of the killing, knowing that he is going to be sucked into investigating the death. A special inspector for the Board of Trade, Bognor is always getting invited to crime scenes, despite knowing almost nothing about crime. His bad lungs, sour attitude, and fleshy physique are out of place in the countryside, but Bognor is in for the duration. He will find the person who caused the accident—or the next arrow’s target could be his heart.  

A poisoned poodle drags Bognor into the high-stakes world of international dog smuggling Whately Wonderful is taking himself on his morning walk when he spies the slab of sirloin. An exceptionally well-bred poodle, he knows there is something odd about the great hunk of meat, but temptation overwhelms him. Just a few minutes after he gobbles up the suspicious steak, Whately is dead, and the world of British dog breeding will never be the same. Board of Trade investigator Simon Bognor hates dogs nearly as much as he hates their owners, and he doesn’t particularly care who killed the prize poodle. But his superiors have seen evidence of an international dog-smuggling ring, and they believe Whately’s death was connected to it. For the sake of Britain, Bognor begrudgingly agrees to look into the case of the murdered mutt, fully aware that by poking his muzzle into other people’s business, he is inviting himself to be put down.