“Boxer Beetle” Ned Beauman

“There was a small cheer, and soon the five fascists were rushing off to find out how many hunting dogs you could fit in a motor car.”

A quick reading of the back cover of “Boxer Beetle” is perplexing. Is this a book about Nazi sympathizers? Entomology? Homosexuality? Murder? Well, the answer is yes. Is it possible to combine all of those into a wry, quirky, funny novel that I can tell my friends about without fear of what they will think of me? Again, the answer is yes.

The mystery is launched in the modern day by the discovery of a letter written in the 1930s by Hitler to a British scientist. Along the way we meet some bizarre characters: a purveyor of Nazi memorabilia who suffers from trimethylaminuria, an entomologist trying to develop a super race of beetles, a Polish-Jewish boxer of subnormal height with only 9 toes and a Fascist whose house is something out of a steam punk novel.

The narrative moves back and forth in time between the present and the 1930s. The big questions are who is the boxer, how did he die and where is he buried, and digging up these answers from the past might save a man’s life in the present. One of the many things I liked about the book was that every time I thought one thing would happen, something else did. Since we know the boxer is going to die, I kept anticipating his death, only to get it wrong every time. I love it when a book can surprise me.

There will be those who have difficulty with the way the story unfolds. At times I didn’t know if I was still reading the same book, as it seemed to head off into a different direction. But this seeming discontinuity is part of the charm of the book.

The writing and story brought to mind many different books like “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union,” “Portuguese Irregular Verbs” and “Setting Free the Bears” with a little “Remains of the Day” thrown in. Not that “Boxer” is really like any of those books, but touches on elements found in each. Beauman is young (the same age as when John Irving published “Setting Free the Bears”) and so he has plenty of time to write more books. I hope they all surprise me.