It’s pretty hard not to love a book that throws in such uncommon words such as hirsute, acumen, trichologist, inamorata, prolixity, and characters who confuse the Nutcracker with the famous Christmas ballet the Ballbreaker.” Archy McNally is sort of an American Jeeves, and I can envision David Case reading these books to perfection. This was my first — not to be the last — Sanders. McNally is the hedonistic quasi detective who handles discreet inquiries for his father, the prestigious Palm Beach lawyer. In a nutshell as described by the book’s bad guy, “ Your father is an attorney but doesn’t do litigation. You started out to be a lawyer but got kicked out of school. You’re single and live with your parents. You drink but you’re no doper. You do investigations for your father’s firm.” McNally’s sidekick is Binky Watrous, supported by the Duchess, who is threatening to cut off Bink’s allowance, so, always wanting to be a P.I., he asks to work for McNally in this most amusing investigation. (“It wasn’t that Binky was incapable of reasoning, but his gears had slipped a bit, just enough so his thinking was slightly skewed. I mean, he was the kind of numbskull who, informed that a friend had choked to death on a fish bone, was likely to inquire, ‘Broiled or sautéed?'” and “His sartorial sense is gravely retarded. He once wore spats over flip-flops to a beach barbecue.”) McNally has been approached by Sunny Fogarty, the nubile treasurer of Whitcomb Funeral Homes. It seems they have been making obscene amounts of money — too many people have been dying — and she can’s understand why. Archy, with the approval of his father, agrees to make some discreet inquiries. The Whitcomb Funeral Home situation is complicated. The patriarch, Horace, has left a controlling share in the family business to his dying wife, Sarah, and is in the midst of a battle with his son, Oliver, who wants to expand the business into a nationwide franchise. Oliver’s wife, Mitzi, falls for Binky, and then develops an unhealthy involvement with a local gangster. It seems that Oliver and this nefarious gentleman have been shipping caskets all over the country where they are picked up not by other funeral homes, but the same cartage service that happens to be owned by the same gangster.. Forced to hobnob with the Palm Beach upper crust, Archy remains skeptical — he wears a puce beret -- even though his own family dresses for dinner and suffers through repasts consisting of a cocktail hour, “shrimp and scallops sautéed with capers, roasted peppers and sundried tomatoes.” The fun with this book isn’t trying to figure out who did what or why, it’s Archy’s joie-de-vie and high society ostentatiousness
Do You like book McNally's Trial (1995)?
"The mailing outlet was crowded when I arrived, and I wondered how the U.S. Postal Service could hope to compete with express shippers offering speedy delivery, sometimes overnight, of everything from a legal-sized envelope to a leather hippopotamus hassock swaddled in bubblewrap and encased in a carton that looked large enough to contain a Wurlitzer" (291)."And so I found Griffin Kling's zealotry disturbing. I am willing to admit that fanatics have accomplished much of value in the history of the higher primates. Artists, for instance, and poets, composers, architects and such--monomaniacs all--have created wondrous things. But a distressing number of the obsessionally driven have engendered wars, inquisitions, pogroms, and general nastiness that prevent an international chorus of 'On the Good Ship Lollipop'" (301-2).
—Lucy
