Kyril Bonfiglioli
Kyril Bonfiglioli was variously an art dealer, editor, and writer.
He wrote four books featuring Charlie Mortdecai, three of which were published in his lifetime, and one posthumously as completed by the satirist Craig Brown. Charlie Mortdecai is the fictional art dealer anti-hero of the series. His character resembles, among other things, an amoral Bertie Wooster with occasional psychopathic tendencies. His books are still in print and have been translated into several different languages including Spanish, French, Italian, German and Japanese.
Bonfiglioli's style and novel structure have often been favourably compared to that of P. G. Wodehouse. Mortdecai and his manservant Jock Strapp bear a fun-house mirror relation to Wodehouse's Wooster and Jeeves. The author makes a nod to this comparison by having Mortdecai reference Wodehouse in the novels.
“There’s nothing like gunfire to drive the glamour from words.”
“Bed is the only place for protracted telephoning. It is also execellently suited to reading, sleeping and listening to canaries. It is not a good place for sex: sex should take place in armchairs, or in bathrooms, or on lawns which have been brushed but not too recently mown, or on sandy beaches if you happen to have been circumcised. If you are too tired to have intercourse except in bed you are probably too tired anyway and should be husbanding your strength.”
“I never think of policemen's wives; their beauty maddens me like wine.”
“It was still only nine o'clock when I set off on the last leg of my journey, feeling old and dirty and incapable. You probably know the feeling if you are over eighteen. ”