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Only now can it be revealed that this novel was not written by Simon Brett. It is, surely, the fabled lost collaboration between P G Wodehouse, Agatha Christie and Miss Sayers and based, it is rumoured, on an unpublished scenario by John Buchan and Anthony Hope. Blotto, handsome, athletic and innocent of anything resembling thought, eldest son to the Dowager Duchess of Tawcester ( pronounced 'Taster' as everybody knows), sets out in his chauffeured Lagonda to the feuding monarchy of Mitteleuropia with his sister Twinks, the beautiful brainbox, equally uninterested in the mechanical side of creation, to rescue Ex-Princess Ethelinda, one-time house guest but now kidnapped by the king who usurped her father. Ethelinda has fallen for Blotto (who is merely embarrassed at the concept) and on his arrival in Mitteleuropia he is met by a sizeable contingent of the usurper's vicious army. Fortunately he is armed with his cricket bat, with which he once scored 176 in the Eton and Harrow match. What more does an Englishman need? (Twinks, we cry.)

After your normal diet of crime noir and police procedurals, this is just the digestif you might be looking for: light, well-balanced and bubbling with subtlety and delight.

Russell James

Blotto, Twinks and the Ex-King's Daughter

by Simon Brett

Constable slim hardback 978-1-84529-935-4, published at an eye-watering £18.99