Untimely Demises

By Tim Cordell
Publisher: Tim Cordell
ISBN: 9781389661464

Since I started writing book reviews for the CCGB I’ve been lucky enough to be sent a whole host of books to review, and few parcels please me more than when I discover they have come from a CCGB member.

So I was naturally chuffed to get this one through from Tim Cordell, a volume of grusome poetry and deathly verse illustrated throughout by Tim’s excellent cartoons.

You may question the sanity of an individual who sets about conjouring up rhyme for so many hideously amusing deaths, but fortunately the results are disturbingly worth it.

Take, for example, the economical but hugely satisfying tale of Escher Jnr:

When Escher Jnr. misbehaved
he was sent up to bed
and early grave

Or this one, about Thelonious:

Thelonious was in a one-man band
that never had a hit
And when things turned acrimonious
it caused the band to split

Not all the poems are as brief as those two examples, but they are as dark and often as blunt, which just adds to humour.

Characters that find their time is up include a nun that, despite her vow of silence regarding the spoken word, drives the nuns to murder with her other bodily noises, and the unfortunate Colin who  speaks before thinking when offered three wishes by a genie.

Inventive, funny and pleasingly twisted, it’s a book that will make you smile.

How ironic if you died laughing before you finished it.

And if you liked that: You may also want to seek out some of Tim’s Roger books, concerning a certain gentleman bereft of his trousers and banana hammock.

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