tags: fantasy, humor, mystery-crime
⭐⭐⭐⭐
from GoodReads, emphasis mine
As a crime wave breaks in the quiet Cotswold streets, Andy Caplet, a failed reporter, is reluctantly immersed in Inspector Hobbes's investigation. Allergic to danger and exercise, Andy is thrown into grave confusion as he discovers not everyone is human. Not only must he come to terms with Hobbes's extreme oddness, and the tooth-collection of Hobbes's housekeeper, the indomitable Mrs. Goodfellow, but he must work out if a suicide, a murder, and several robberies are connected? And what is the connection? Hobbes goes missing. The cops decide he's big and bad enough to look after himself, but Andy, striving against deep-rooted incompetence and clumsiness, sets out to find him. With a big bad dog to assist, armed only with a leg of lamb, and despite losing his trousers, he discovers the key to the mystery is in the blood. But whose blood? Where is Hobbes? And can he catch vampirism off false teeth?
This is the first in Wilkie Martin's unhuman series of fast-paced, comic fantasy crime adventures, with lashings of great food.
'I ought to tell you, dear, he can get rather wild when he's hungry'
I loved the strangeness of both Inspector Hobbes and his housekeeper, Mrs. Goodfellow. Hobbes is a huge person and looks beastly but is very gentle, intelligent and polite, does not tolerate bad language, and he and Mrs. G never forget to say grace before having the delicious dinners she prepares. I laughed out loud several times regardless of the annoying narrator, Andy Caplet. Andy is extremely gullible, physically unfit, lazy, incompetent, naive, accident prone, jealous of his handsome co-worker, and obsessed with a girl co-worker (whom he describes as not pretty at all). I want to smack him upside the head and am wondering why the good Inspector keeps him around. He redeems himself toward the end of the book and I kinda forgive him. I'm looking forward to reading the next book.
Highly recommended for urban fantasy and mystery readers.
