‘Carnage on the Committee' by Ruth Dudley Edwards is a satirical farce which lifts the dustbin on all the rubbish spoken and written about literary prizes.  When the chairwoman of the committee awarding the “Knapper-Warburton” prize is murdered, her replacement is Edwards’s awesome series heroine Baroness “Jack” Troutbeck, as outrageous and politically incorrect as ever.

There are, of course, more murders as the odious members of the juding panel (virtually all of them) are slaughtered by an unseen hand.  Yet these members of the literati are so awful – jealous, back-biting bullies in the main – that, like Baroness Troutbeck, you want the murderer to get away with it.

Fortunately, there is no bigger bully than “Jack” Troutbeck, who sails through the storm as stately as a galleon, firing broadside after hilarious broadside into the pretensions of the literary establishment.  And who dunnit in the end?  That is the best (and oldest) joke of all, proving that the author can wield a stiletto as well as a blunderbuss.’

Mike Ripley, Birmingham Post