Felix Pink, an aging widower, fills his time by assisting dying patients with their planned suicides, sticking just barely to the right side of British law. He processes patient’s wills and supplies them with a lethal dose of nitrous oxide. His practice takes a turn for the worse when, paired with a newbie, they accidentally kill the wrong person. Felix pink has unintentionally committed murder.

The novel is filled with British comedy routines both verbal and physical. Characters misunderstand one another, get their pants stuck on fences they are climbing over, and have pet dogs hump their legs when they sneak into houses. Unfortunately the plot is propelled by protagonists illogically deciding not to reveal their actions to the police nor anyone else even when they are fully innocent and coincidences too improbable to be credible.

This is Kate Atkinson’s sixth in her series of Jackson Brody novels. Brody is former British police, now private investigator, called upon to look for a stolen painting: Lady with a Weasel. The question of who stole the renaissance oil painting is secondary. Front and center is Atkinson’s delightful send-up of two of Britain’s most hallowed traditions. In one part of her farce, a lunatic of a family live in a Downtown Abbey-like mansion called Burton Makepeace. While Atkinson destroys the obsession with old money and crazy old Ladies of the house, she also dismantles the British preoccupation with murder mysteries. A bedraggled, over-the-top, full-of-itself, not-very-talented, understaffed troupe of actors host a murder-mystery dinner in Burton Makepeace mansion. In a nod to Agatha Christie, all of the main characters find themselves trapped in a single location (a vicious snowstorm makes travel impossible) to solve a real crime, while Jackson Brody tries to make sense of it all. A fine escapist read for troubling times.