Author Archives: Phillip Fitzsimmons

All The News That’s Fit To Forget

Posted on by Standard 2

kilcladdich-audio-no1

The Case of the Case of Kilcladdich audiobook was released this month and it went straight to number one in the coveted Traditional Detective Mysteries category. I was hoping for either the Locked Room Mysteries or Witty Sleuth categories but they’re both hotly contested and non-existent, so I knew that my chances were slim. Nevertheless, it’s an honour just to be nominated.

For those who haven’t heard it yet, it’s hilarious. I liked the book very much (full disclosure, I wrote it) but narrator Tim Bruce takes it to another level.

The other bit of news is that there’s a new newsletter and if you’re subscribed you’ll have observed that it’s such a blockbuster that I forgot to mention that The Case of the Case of Kilcladdich audiobook was at number one for a week.

It’s not too late to get your copy of this sensational special edition of the Anty Boisjoly Bulletin by signing up here.

Official locked-room humourist of the 2024 Olympic Games

Posted on by Standard 2

A local grocery store has at the door that which can only best be described as a sail advertising the availability of “Official Olympic Games 2024 Merchandise.”
That’s it. It doesn’t say what sort of merchandise. We’re just meant to be excited to rush in and see what they’ve got in stock that they always have in stock but now with a logo on it. Or perhaps they’re declaring the entire store official, like sacred ground, and anything you buy between now and when it’s discounted after the circus has left town is officially official.
I don’t know, and it’s in that capacity that I’m announcing that I’m the official locked-room humourist of the 2024 Olympic Games. If that’s not how it works and/or I’m stepping on the toes of the actual official locked room humourist, I’ll apologise now and withdraw the declaration.
Oh, and the February newsletter is now available in the archives.

The Ides of Audible

Posted on by Standard 2

kilcladdich-audio-coverThe Case of the Case of Kilcladdich launched officially on March 1st, unofficially on February 21st, was on most platforms by February 23rd, and it’s available as of today, the ides of March, on Audible.

Tim Bruce assumes the voices of a cast of almost all Scots in the sixth Anty Boisjoly Mystery, in which two impossible murders eliminate both master distillers of Anty Boisjoly’s favourite tipple. Anty must navigate a literal divide between two ancient communities, ruthless rivals in whisky, history, and golf, to identify the killer and save the spirit of Glen Glennegie.

Launch Day for RMS Ballast

Posted on by Standard 4
MaMaRB

Today (assuming it’s still March 1st by the time this message reaches civilisation) Mystery and Malice aboard RMS Ballast leaves dry dock for a stormy saga spanning the centuries and the seven seas.

This time it’s deadly weather, pirate treasure, and all-too-clever locked-stateroom murder that tests Anty’s talent for mysterious malice, even though the suspects are limited to the few and crew aboard a leaky yacht tossed on the tempestuous outer Scilly Seas.

Mystery and Malice aboard RMS Ballast is available here and now on Kindle, Unlimited, and Paperback.

Thank you very much for reading.

Boisjoly Back in Buccaneering Baffler!

Posted on by Standard 6

ballast-embarks-march-1st

Mystery and Malice aboard RMS Ballast, the eighth Anty Boisjoly Mystery, embarks for the open seas on March 1st and, finally, we have a pirate number.

Anty, Vickers, Inspector Wittersham, and a passenger list of howling eccentrics find themselves prey to the sway and spray of the Scilly Seas when what at first seems a simple, unexplainable, locked-stateroom murder twists into a tale of buried treasure, perilous weather and dangerous endeavours at sea.

When we first embark, romance is in the ocean air as Anty conspires to win the heart of Frederica Hannibal-Pool aboard her uncle’s yacht, but when dashing Dare Flashburn joins the journey telling tales of pirate gold, the moonlight crossing becomes a stormy odyssey of mutiny and murder and mal de mer.

Mystery and Malice aboard RMS Ballast is available on pre-order as of here and now.

There’s a cryptic clue to one of many mysteries aboard RMS Ballast in this month’s newsletter which also features two new Anty cartoons. Get your February newsletter now while supplies last:  https://indefensiblepublishing.com/newsletters/

Spam Recipes

Posted on by Standard 2

anty-seance-newsletter-cartoon

Example of spam, from this February’s newsletter and the seance scene in Foreboding Foretelling at Ficklehouse Felling.

Recently a global new methodology has been introduced to combat junk mail. The measure, in simple terms, requires that mass mailings be sent from a high-level domain the DNS settings for which include specific DMARC entries pointing to network-traceable reverse neuromix memblemeasures, the NOSTRIL values of which are furismically distributed. It’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s it in a nutshell.

And of course there was much rejoicing, because who likes spam? Your spam folder likes spam, that’s who, and in fact it likes it so much that, in conjunction with the above-mentioned counter-measures, it sometimes extends its reach beyond its grasp.

My very unscientific dart-in-the-dark analysis suggests that roughly half of Anty Boisjoly’s newsletters are being thusly diverted to the recipient’s junk mail folder. I’ve since implemented the required DNS changes (or, rather, I think I have — I may well have accidentally hacked into NASA) but, what with the notoriously closed-minded habit-prone practices of your poorly socialised email algorithm, once a spam always a spam.

So, if you signed up for the Anty Boisjoly intermittent newsletter and didn’t get one, there’s an excellent chance that it’s in your spam folder (or was once in your spam folder but has since been digested). If you add the source email address (pj.fitzsimmons@indefensiblepublishing.com) to your contacts or simply identify the newsletter as not spam, that should solve the problem for the future. If you can’t find it at all don’t hesitate for an instant to write and say so, again, to pj.fitzsimmons@indefensiblepublishing.com.

The latest number is out, by the way, and so if you don’t have the February edition announcing a new Anty Boisjoly, the next audiobook release date, a cryptic clue and two cartoons, and it’s not in your spam folder, it’s possible that you haven’t signed up yet. The solution for this, happily, is uncomplicated, and can be found here: https://indefensiblepublishing.com/newsletters/

A Twisty Misty Listeny Mystery

Posted on by Standard 3

Production is sufficiently advanced to lay claim to a publication date for the audiobook of The Case of the Case of Kilcladdich, Anty’s twisty misty whisky mystery.

Tim Bruce returns this time as Anty and Vickers and two entire Scottish villages, sheep included, and manages to keep everyone distinct and distilled and delightful, even after the whisky kicks in during a golf match which is frankly hilarious on paper but which Tim raises to a pro tour de force.

In The Case of the Case of Kilcladdich, Anty travels to the timeless source waters of Glen Glennegie to help decide the fate of his family’s favourite ferment, but an impossible locked room murder is only one of a multitude of mysteries that try Anty’s wits and witticisms to their northern limit.

Time trickles down on the traditional tipple as Anty unravels family feuds, ruptured romance, shepherdless sheep, and a series of suspiciously surfacing secrets to sort out who killed whom and how and why and who might be next to die.

We know from experience that the universe laughs at those who announce specific publication dates for their audiobooks, so let’s say that The Case of the Case of Kilcladdich will be available on audio from around March 1st. In practice, it should start appearing in your favourite storefronts from February 21st and then gently age in a barrel of Audible until some special moment in early March.

Anty Boisjoly Newsletter Archive

Posted on by Standard 6

antyboisjoly-merry-christmasSomehow over the last year, on rare occasion, Anty Boisjoly escaped the books and appeared in several single-frame cartoons, inspired by the sort of thing that Punch was doing in the 1920s.

In the main, these cartoons were happy enough doing what social media content is meant to do — make a few billionaires microscopically richer — but then I reserved a couple of them for the Christmas number of the Anty Boisjoly Intermittent Newsletter where, it turns out, they received a good deal more appreciation.carnaby-cartoon

The Christmas newsletter also included a cover reveal, a golf match, and an audiobook update. It was a much more substantial newsletter and several readers replied with some very nice and encouraging words, which have served to shape forthcoming newsletter policy

Anty Boisjoly has rather a lot planned for 2024 and it’s all going to be announced first in the newsletters, which will accordingly include much more insider information, early discount tip-offs, clues, and cartoons. And there’s now a newsletter archive, where back issues can be found and where new editions are posted, four weeks after subscribers have had a look at them. Why should they be the only ones to suffer?

Foreboding Foretelling at Ficklehouse Felling is Finally Finished and Finessed

Posted on by Standard 4

ficklehouse

Anty Boisjoly is back with his reddest-of-herringed, twistiest-of-turned, locked-roomiest manor house mystery yet.

It’s a classic, manor house, mystery-within-a-locked-room-mystery for Anty Boisjoly, when a death is foretold by a mystic that Anty’s sure is a charlatan. But when an impossible murder follows the foretelling, Anty and his old ally and nemesis Inspector Wittersham must sift the connivance, contrivance, misguidance, and reliance on pseudoscience of the mad manor and its oddball inhabitants before the killer strikes again.

Foreboding Foretelling at Ficklehouse Felling is available from November 9th because that was the earliest pre-order date available. In fact I’ve never fully understood the perceived value of pre-orders, but I’m told that it’s is the only way to acquire this ‘hype’ that’s got everyone talking. It’s also the only way to have this link: https://mybook.to/ficklehouse

Reckoning at the Riviera Royale Real Release on Audible

Posted on by Standard 3

riviera-audio-coverTwo weeks ago was meant to be the official launch of Reckoning at the Riviera Royale audiobook and, technically, it was, except for Audible, who likes to play hard-to-get.

Finally, Tim Bruce and his personal cast of a dozen accents and attitudes is on Audible as of today (October 25th) reading Reckoning at the Riviera Royale, Anty’s fifth locked-room puzzler.

In Reckoning at the Riviera Royale, we finally meet Anty’s mum, who features among the suspects when Anty determines that what at first appears to be a simple trampling of a clown dressed as a mouse in an elephant’s cage on a tropical island in the middle of the night turns out to be something out of the ordinary.

https://www.amazon.com/Reckoning-Riviera-Royale-Boisjoly-Mysteries/dp/B0CLMPPZS5