But Brunswick is bumped by Constable Twitten into accepting that the town is starting to look more like the crime-ridden book Steine despises, Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock. The town is plagued by a series of burglaries, and Inspector Steine’s saturnine colleague Sergeant Brunswick, a man whose days as a war hero are long behind him, is frustrated by his boss’s refusal to confront reality. When Twitten attends a theatrical opening night, he finds himself sitting next to a poisonous theatrical critic, who is murdered during the play. Read more: JK Rowling, Agatha Christie and Virginia Woolf named on list of 100 essential books by female writers – list in full Such local lowlifes as “Stanley-knife Stanley” hardly register on his radar, and when an energetic and enthusiastic newcomer, Constable Twitten (a name designed to irritate the opponents of comic crime), begins to shake things up at the station, Steine is obliged to accept that things are slowly turning nasty in the city of Brighton, some time before it becomes London-by-the-Sea. His life is comfortable – no crime and no criminals (he claims), just a series of undemanding duties. After the discreetly handled scene of mass murder that opens the book (in which two rival criminal gangs destroy each other), Inspector Steine maintains that there is no longer any lawbreaking in Brighton, and resists any suggestions to the contrary.

Truss’s locale here is Brighton, the year 1957. Truss is, of course, most celebrated for her tongue-in-cheek book on grammar, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, but she has also made her mark as a novelist and as a radio dramatist – this new book is an extension of her successful BBC Radio 4 series featuring the obdurate Inspector Steine.

Lynne truss new book