In the sprawling pantheon of literary detectives, spies, and rogues, most fit neatly into archetypes. We have the brooding genius (Sherlock Holmes), the suave gentleman (James Bond), and the hard-boiled cynic (Sam Spade). And then, teetering precariously somewhere between a Cognac-induced stupor and a masterpiece forgery, we have Mortdecai .
offers the purest form of escapism: the idiotic aristocrat. He is the anti-anti-hero. He doesn’t struggle with his conscience because he doesn’t have one. Reading a Mortdecai novel is like drinking a pint of absinthe while listening to a drunk history professor rant about the fall of the Roman Empire. It is intellectually stimulating, morally depraved, and deeply funny. mortdecai
The Honourable Charles may have lost the box office war, but he is winning the battle for cult immortality. And he would hate that we just said something so sentimental. He’d probably call us a "bounder." We’ll take it. In the sprawling pantheon of literary detectives, spies,
In the books, polishes his mustache with wax made from a secret recipe. He panics when it gets wet. He judges other men’s honor by the curl of their facial hair. In the film, the mustache was marketed as heavily as the plot. Lord Cockrane mustaches, wax kits, and memes of Depp's lip caterpillar flooded the internet for a brief, glorious week. offers the purest form of escapism: the idiotic aristocrat
Bonfiglioli wrote three novels between 1972 and 1976: Don’t Point That Thing at Me (aka The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery ), After You with the Pistol , and Something Nasty in the Woodshed . In these books, Mortdecai narrates his misadventures with a voice dripping in vitriol, high-society snobbery, and existential dread. He is a coward who stumbles into violence, a lecher who loathes everyone equally, and a genius who makes catastrophically stupid decisions.