When celebrity astronomer Edwin Bubble is found battered to death by his own telescope, the morning after a ‘Blood Moon’ lunar eclipse, Detective Inspector Clinton Trump crashes onto the scene like a megaton meteorite who’s late for a date with a small, blue-green planet at the edge of a spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy.

With Edwin tipped to win a trip to space in the ‘Celebrity Come Mooning’ reality TV series – and a return trip, budget permitting – South East England’s greatest detective makes it his mission to figure out which lunatic launched Edwin Bubble to the heavens a little earlier than anticipated.

Could the murderer be Edwin’s estranged son, Tycho? Is the killer a fellow celeb who wants Edwin out of the way? Or are they a schoolmate still seething over schoolboy pranks in the days before travelling to Mars was a cool idea?

I received a free copy of this book courtesy of the author.

Paul Mathews returns with the second instalment in the Detective Clinton Trump series, The Blood Moon of Doom. Hot on the heels of having solved the murder of a butler, drowned in his homemade mango chutney, genius Detective Inspector Trump has another mysterious death on his hands. Upper Goosing, European Murder Destination of the Year 2015, has seen its fair share of suspicious and untimely deaths, so the discovery of celebrity astronomer Edwin Bubble dead in his garden is no surprise to residents. Neither is it a great shock to discover he has been smashed about the head with his own telescope.

Once again Mathews brings comedy in bucket loads as DI Clinton Trump bungles his way around the investigation following gut instincts and jumping from one implausible suspect to the next with little to no evidence. A supporting cast of characters met in the previous book help ratchet up the hilarity and absurdness as does a cohort of over-inflated celebrity egos bolstering the cast.

The Blood Moon of Doom makes for a quick read. The hilarity and absurdity of a case led by Clinton Trump kept me wanting to know what ridiculous assumptions he would leap to next. The exasperation of his colleagues and his often incorrectly detected suspects add to the mirth Mathews’ books deliver in spades.

In the Clinton Trump series, Paul Mathews has created something reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot mysteries. The way the book follows the investigation from clue to clue, the ever growing list of possible suspects all of whom are plausible depending on whose viewpoint you look at things from has a striking resemblance to a classic Poirot investigation. The healthy dose of comedy sprinkled liberally from the first to the last page make this book, and moreover the series to date, a fresh and funny journey that while being a subtle nod to the Poirot stories, are something new and fantastic fun to sit and read.

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