Book Review:The Cuckoos of Batch Magna by Peter Maughan

Disclosure / Disclaimer: I received this ebook, free of charge, from the author, for review purposes on this blog. No other compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to post about it 


I love it when authors contact me and ask me to read their books!
Unfortunately I was delayed getting to this one, but I am so so glad I did!

Synopsis: When Sir Humphrey Miles Pinkerton Strange, huntin' shootin' and fishin' Squire of Batch Magna, goes to his reward (doubtless to find God as true-blue British as his more recent but equally worthy ancestors), his rambling but rotting estate passes to distant relative Humph, a hapless dollar doodler in New York. With $$ in his eyes, Humph decides to make a killing by transforming the sleepy backwater of Batch Magna into a theme park image of rural England - a vacation paradise for free-spending US millionaires. 

But while the village's threadbare businessmen see the plan as a windfall, the tenants of the estate's dilapidated houseboats are above any consideration of filthy lucre and stand their ground for tradition's sake . and because they consider eviction notices not to be cricket. Each disgruntled faction sees the other as the unwelcome cuckoo chick in the family nest! So, lead by randy pulp-crime writer Phineas Cook and Lt-Commander James Cunningham DSO, DSC and Bar, RN (ret) - a man with a glass eye to suit every occasion (and all painted with naval battle scenes where the Union Jack flies triumphant) - the motley crew takes on Wall Street . broadside to broadside.

Check out an excerpt too!


Review: This book started a little slow for me (in fact, I put it down multiple times, before advising myself to 'soldier on' and get it read), but once it found it's grove, it was non-stop hilarity and fun until the end! I finished reading it in less than 2 hours! My mother raised me on a healthy dose of PBS, which at that time featured a good 50% British programming, so I have a 'fondness' as they say for British humor, and this book is rife and full of it it! 

The characters are hilarious and you will have NO problem picturing them, one and all. In fact as I was reading it, I kept thinking British miniseries in my head! It reminded me very much of Are You Being Served? with it's inanity and quips ans SO British characters! Which is to say it was a hilarious romp through the Welsh/English countryside! It is one of those books that you do not want to end, as you so love the characters, and in fact more books are already in the works! Book 2: Sir Humphrey of Batch Hall plus The Famous Cricket Match (Batch Magna #2) is ready and book 3 is on it's way as well! I can't wait to read them all and keep with all these crazy and lovable characters! Whew- that is a good thing!

So give this wiley little ebook a go and I know you will fall in love with the Humph and his wacky bunch of friends in Batch Magna!

About the Author: Peter Maughan, an ex-actor, fringe theatre director and script writer, is married and lives in the Welsh Marches, the borderland between England and Wales, and the backdrop to the Batch Magna novels. All the books in the series feature converted paddle steamers on Batch Magna’s river the Cluny, and he is a former houseboat dweller himself, living in the mid-1970s (the time frame for the novels) on a converted Thames sailing barge among a small colony of houseboats on the Medway, deep in rural Kent. An idyllic time, heedless days of freedom in that other world of the river which inspired the novels, set in a place called Batch Magna.