I appreciate the publisher allowing me to read this book. I really enjoyed reading it the plot was interesting and the characters made me want to know more about them. I highly recommend.

I can only echo what other readers of this novella have more eloquently expressed with a deeply felt ".....Wut?" The tone and humor are pitch black, and I think I am meant to experience this as a skewering of a certain type of British novel/idea, but there are moments in the three main character's backstories that are so upsetting and real that I found the toggling between tragedy and comedy whiplash-like and not completely successful. It's a truly unsettling and strange experience, which is perhaps recommendation enough.

First published in the UK in 2020; published by ‎ Canongate Books on September 21, 2021

Most of the story that unfolds in Mr Cadmus follows a British tradition of making murder the undercurrent of a whimsical story. Yet a growing darkness makes the story, by the end, more disturbing than whimsical.

Millicent Swallow and Maud Finch have an aunt in common, but they did not know each other until their teenage years, when the aunt introduced them. They also have murder in common. During their young lives, each killed for reasons they never came to regret. It is likely that neither woman is entirely right in the head, although they seem very proper and well suited to a quiet life in a gossipy village. As the years passed, they became as close as sisters, and by the early 1980s they occupy similar houses on the same street in Little Camborne, “the tiniest dot in a map of the county of Devonshire,” separated only by the house that stands between theirs.

When Theodore Cadmus moves into the middle house, the cousins are concerned. “I hope he doesn’t have any habits,” one cousin says. “Such as what?” the other asks. “Oh you know, food and so forth.” The cousins are quickly charmed by the new arrival, a single man in his 40s from Italy who lavishes the two women with attention and compliments. When reports of crime begin to crop up in the sleepy community and nearby villages, the reader will suspect they might relate to Mr Cadmus. The cousins do not suspect Cadmus of any crime. Surely he cannot be held accountable for the vicar who seems to have purloined the local parish’s property, although Cadmus and the vicar were together in a bank to which Cadmus paid a sudden visit. The cousins believe Cadmus is much too polite to be a criminal, even if his account of his past seems to change from conversation to conversation.

Theodore’s true past begins with a childhood on a small, misty island between Sardinia and Sicily. As a child, he kept his eye open for German soldiers and English spies. He was mistreated by both but had a particularly ugly encounter with a group of Englishmen. That episode gave him a dual purpose: revenge and finding hidden treasure at a location described on a map that a German soldier liberated from one of the Englishmen.

The story is odd and quirky, the kind of story in which the appearance of a parrot with a vulgar vocabulary is not unexpected, although the parrot’s fate might come as a shock. Mr Cadmus begins as an amusing story about eccentric characters who are not what they appear to be. The story eventually takes a darker turn, complete with brutal murders, voices from a grave, and a corpse whose “mouth and nostrils were stuffed with green amethysts so that he could no longer breathe.” The change in tone, complete with legends of a purple seagull, gives the novel a hint of the supernatural. While the change is a bit jarring, the ending is consistent with karma, given that none of the characters deserve to go unpunished.

Readers who want likeable characters and happy endings should avoid Mr Cadmus. Readers who want to be surprised — even if the story makes them cringe a bit — might be nourished by a plot that, if not entirely satisfying, is filled with unexpected events.

RECOMMENDED

It's a darkly humorous, wickedly funny satirical story for 75% of the book, the last 25% it's confusing and I didn't liked it.
It's the first book I read by this author so I can't compare it to other works but I liked the style of writing and the humour.
A semi-great novella.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

"Two apparently harmless women reside in cottages one building apart in the idyllic English village of Little Camborne. Miss Finch and Miss Swallow, cousins, have put their pasts behind them and settled into conventional country life. But when a mysterious foreigner, Theodore Cadmus - from a Mediterranean island nobody has heard of - moves into the middle cottage, the safe monotony of their lives is shattered.

Soon, long-hidden secrets and long-held grudges threaten to surface, drawing all into a vortex of subterfuge, theft, violence, mayhem...and murder."

So, in other words, just my Midsomer Murders-esque kind of dream!

Well that was a strange story. Small English village, two weird old spinsters, mysterious stranger then really dark back stories for these three characters are revealed. I kept reading this all the way through but I’m not quite sure why, trying to figure it all out I guess. It’s quirky, and intriguing but the tone is weird, it’s cosy for a bit then takes a black turn and then goes back to strange. Interesting but unsatisfying, for me anyway.

WWII secrets, a treasure hunt, vengeful designs, murderous grudges and a cast of very sympathetic but deeply flawed oddballs are some of the ingredients in Peter Ackroyd's latest comedy, a dark and twisty fairytale that I found captivating from start to finish.
A delightful voyage into Absurdistan, elegantly written by one of best wordsmiths at work today in English literature.
An entertaining and witty pleasure that deserves to be enjoyed without moderation!

Many thanks to Netgalley and Canongate for this terrific ARC

Mr. Cadmus, by Peter Ackroyd, published by   Canongate Books, began like a cozy mystery. Then it became dark (trigger warning: descriptive sexual act, death). It ended with legends, fantasy and mythology. While I knew who Mr. Ackroyd was, I hadn't read his work before.
Miss Finch & Miss Swallow (cousins) live in cottages at Little Camborne. Then new resident, Mr. Cadmus, moves in between them.
The settings are England & small Meditaranian Island, Caldera. The time periods jump around without much explanation. Seems to begin in present day, then back to the war, the Germans & Englishman mentioned, once we're in 1961, 1945, 1978, 1982, back & forth with the characters adolescent history.
This is a very short story which should have been an easy read. I appreciated the dark humor, but there was no direction to this story. Too many genres packed into a disjointed mishmash.
I received an advance digital copy of this book from Netgalley. The opinion is my voluntary review.

This has all the hallmarks of a distinctly British read. Two single ladies, both losing their prime in separate ways, are anxious about the new neighbour they will get, for the house in between their cottages – a set of three in a quaint Devon village – has long been empty. Cue concern when he arrives about the man's bright-coloured clothing, embarrassing parrot, propensity for kissing people and driving too fast, and the great unspoken war between the two of them as to who gets more intimate with him when he turns out to be charmingly easy to please. But what's this? The town up the road has gained a rapist? And what's this now? The post office has been burgled? How could that be allowed? Oh, chapter two proves one of the two women is a murderer. Clearly there is both the good and the bad in this Devonian Eden.

Now it must be slightly galling to write something like this and then see the likes of Richard Osman sell ten gazillion copies more than you do. For there is an undeniable sharing of the DNA here, even if this is less 'heritage', less 'canon' and more arch and acerbic. There is the tweeness here of the feminine character of these women, and a surprise when one's interior thought process recalls the smell of Chinese restaurants, for here in the early 1980s it didn't seem likely they'd've been that brave. But there is also a decent spread of the unexpected – the flashbacks, the suggestion of magic realism, the anal rape...

But there is also the sense nobody must have been too worried about the sales, for there are bits here (of an echt e-book, not a review advance copy) that were just bodged. The first flashback, putting the two women together, seemed muddled. One minute, much later, the three are going somewhere and then the next sentence they're getting back. People return to cars before we're told they've left them. And the biggest quibble of all – the biggest sign that not enough care was given to this – is that that wonderful premise, and the very finely done characters, are all ignored by the end for piffle. Yes, it's piffle. It has so little connection to what has gone before, and half the fabulous details I mentioned in my precis just go out the window like, well, like some cussing parrot. The great sense of comedy we started with gets killed off, and replaced by nothing so much as waffle.

So it's back to the Osmans, then.

First half – four stars at least. Final third – one and a half stars at most.

2 stars, for the beginning. I greatly enjoyed the first half of this book…gaining insight into the secrets behind the prim and proper images of the main characters was darkly amusing. But then, something happened. There was a rapid nonsensical twist, which just continued to spiral out of control. Page after page, I thought “this makes no sense” and “I’m not following this at all.” I enjoy the weird twist that works…but this was like reading two different stories…one of which was rambling drivel.