A Pride of Heroes (1969)

Blurb:

My review:

While less overtly bizarre than Skin Deep, it is also fundamentally more bizarre.  The setting is “relatively” normal: an English manor turned into a theme park for gullible American tourists, run by a group of eccentric war heroes who go around feeding each other to man-eating lions kept in pornographic tiger-pits.  The arrival of the plebeian Superintendent Pibble to investigate a suspicious suicide (for which no adequate motive is ever given) gives Dickinson the opportunity to write a social satire.  Two other themes running through the book are the idea of reality vs. fiction (typified in the theme park), and the futility of war (the hero brothers are viewed as heroes because they took part in a spectacular defeat—Quimaret: who merits?).  The detective plot, however, is quite batty—so batty I have chosen to reveal it.

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The General and the Admiral fight a duel—and the General believes he has murdered his brother.  The son-in-law, who actually did do the murder, convinces the General to feed the body to a man-eating lion and use the remains as fertiliser.  The son-in-law then hangs a servant, for a reason never explained.  He then feeds the General to the man-eating lion, before attempting to hang Superintendent Pibble of the Yard.  Pebble is then rescued by a crazed Texan photographer, and puts his head in the noose to oblige his rescuer’s request for a souvenir.  (Gobble, as H.M. once said, gobble.)  it is then discovered that the General’s daughter is really the Admiral’s daughter, and manoeuvred her husband into killing everyone—unbeknownst to him, however.  Gark!

To the Bibliography.

To the Peter Dickinson Page.

To the Grandest Game in the World.

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