The New York Times Book Review, Liam Callanan Can a book be too funny? Tom Sharpe's latest novel might just be. Too much laughing is required.... Take, for example, Timothy Bright, who is inevitably not. The dissolute scion of a dissolute family, Timothy kicks off an involved chain of events of Rube Goldbergish intricacy. He falls into money trouble, gets mixed up with mobsters, robs his aunt--and from there, it's a short trip to being dragged nude from a cellar by a Rottweiler at the behest of a chief constable who's trying to escape the siren song of his wife's lesbian house guest. And so on.