Wax Lyrical for Death

Thanks to Country House Library 

Title: Wax Lyrical for Death

Author: Not known 

Publisher: Not known 

Source book: The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde 

Wax Lyrical for Death is the latest book in the David “Pinky” Perkins and Akrid Snell series of detective fiction. The series sometimes has a limited print run but they had a good review from crime Books Digest in Lost in a Good Book. Perkins and Snell books are normally well-received but Wax Lyrical for Death got pretty scathing reviews. As a fictional character, Akrid Snell is quite sensitive about his reviews. He’s hoping for a Perkins and Snell boxed set.

Other volumes in the Perkins and Snell series are Dead Among the Living (an unidentifiable torso is found floating in the River Humber), and Requiem for a Safecracker (a twenty-year old corpse is discovered in a bricked up spare room with a bag of money).

Tragically Perkins is killed and partially eaten by the Minotaur which effectively ends the Perkins and Snell parnership, and almost at once Snell succumbs to the mispeling vyrus. And sadly we are never told who was the author of this successful series of detective novels. 

Also mentioned in The Well of Lost Plots is Bunyan’s Bootscraper by John McSquurd. It’s one of the best books ever written but has never been out of the author’s hands. The Jurisfiction Guide to the Great Library describes it as a rare and wonderful treat.

Thanks to Book Muster Down Under