Don't Point That Thing At Me by Kyril Bonfiglioli - Book 1 of the Mortdecai Trilogy, now a major motion picture starring Johnny Depp Introducing the Hon. Charlie Mortdecai, art dealer, aristocrat and assassin, in the first of the Mortdecai novels Portly art dealer and seasoned epicurean Charlie Mortdecai comes into possesion of a stolen Goya, the disappearance of which is causing a diplomatic ruction between Spain and its allies. Not that that matters to Charlie ...until compromising pictures of some British diplomats also come into his possession and start to muddy the waters. All he's trying to do is make a dishonest living, but various governments, secret organizations and an unbelievably nubile young German don't see it that way and pretty soon he's in great need of his thuggish manservant Jock to keep them all at bay ...and the Goya safe. First published in the 1970s, this hilarious novel is part Ian Fleming part P G Wodehouse. It is now a major motion picture starring Johnny Depp as Mortdecai, Ewan McGregor as Jock and Gwyneth Paltrow. "A rare mixture of wit and imaginative unpleasantness". (Julian Barnes)."You couldn't snuggle under the duvet with anything more disreputable and delightful". (Stephen Fry). "The jokes are excellent, but the most horrible things keep happening...Funny and chilling". (Sunday Telegraph). Kyril Bonfiglioli was born on the south coast of England in 1928 of an English mother and Italo-Slovene father. After studying at Oxford and five years in the army, he took up a career as an art dealer, like his eccentric creation Charlie Mortdecai. He lived in Oxford, Lancashire, Ireland and Jersey, where he died in 1985. He wrote four Charlie Mortdecai novels, and a fifth historical Mortdecai novel (about a distinguished ancestor).
"A rare mixture of wit and imaginative unpleasantness" —Julian Barnes
"You couldn't snuggle under the duvet with anything more disreputable and delightful" —Stephen Fry
"Just read the first page of this book and try to keep a straight face. Then try to put the book down. You won't be able to do either one. This cult classic (the first of a trilogy), about louche, sybaritic Charlie Mortdecai, an art dealer largely untroubled by conscience, draws readers into its unpolitically comic world and keeps them there. The plot concerns Mortdecai's efforts to keep one step ahead of nemesis Martland, a policeman vested with the power to work outside the law, and to deliver a stolen Goya he has concealed in the headliner of his Rolls Royce Silver Ghost. The plot takes him to America (where is he much bemused by the locals, and they by him) and back again, ending in a most intriguing predicament. Wry and dry, picaresque and profane, a book like this can be so hard to describe that efforts to do so—invoking some or all of P. G. Wodehouse, Kingsley Amis, Vladimir Nabokov, even Hunter S. Thompson and John Kennedy Toole—give the impression that it's a Frankenstein's monster. Not true. Bonfiglioli's Mortdecai is a true original, and there's nothing quite so hard to describe as that." —Booklist (Starred Review)
"What are the books like? They are darker, stranger and more interesting than any film of them (or at least any film cleared for general release) could be...The novels are extremely funny, first of all. They deal, like Wodehouse, in sentence-by-sentence sparkle, in gestures of grand insouciance. " —Sam Leith, The Guardian
