Clothe Them All in Green O by Tyson Frost

Thanks to Kuoni

Title: Clothe Them All in Green O

Author: Tyson Frost

Publisher: Holdens (USA)

Source book: Death in Zanzibar by MM Kaye

Dany Ashton’s much married mother Lorraine has married yet again. This time her husband is the well-known author Tyson Frost. Tyson is the author of Last Service For Lloyd, Clothe Them All in Green O, The Sacred Swine and at least half a dozen other novels that have been filmed, televised, analysed, attacked, imitated, selected by Book Societies and Literary Guilds and sold by the million. He has a house on Zanzibar, and Dany has been invited to stay.

Unfortunately she has been implicated in the murder of Tyson’s family solicitor, and someone has stolen her passport. So, slightly madly, she travels to Zanzibar disguised as Ada, the short-sighted secretary of Lashmer J Holden Jr (known as Lash) the son of Tyson’s American publisher. 

[Honestly though: Lash? What a dreadful name. Dany is pretty ghastly too.]

Tyson Frost is said to be editing his grandfather Emory (Rory) Frost’s diaries for publication. Apparently the diaries are pretty racy. Rory rescued an American girl from pirates and went on to marry her and you can read her story in Trade Wind by MM Kaye. He was the first Frost to own the beautiful House of Shade.

Barclay Frost, Tyson’s uncle, wrote a history of the house in the late 1890s, The House of Shade, and had it printed at his own expense bound in red morocco*. Barclay’s prose is insufferably pedantic and he never uses one word where half a dozen will do. And what a stupid man he turned out to be. I’m not offering any spoilers though.

Thanks to The Culture Trip

* leather, originally made with goatskin from Nigeria. Hence the name: Morocco. I know.

See also “like Webster’s dictionary we’re Morocco bound” as sung by Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. This link does work, honest.