D. E. Ireland

After making a sensation at the Embassy Ball, Eliza Doolittle has moved on from 27A Wimpole Street and is working as a teaching assistant to Henry Higgins’ archnemesis, Emil Nepommuck. Nepommuck is a rude and arrogant blackmailer and womanizer. When Eliza discovers his murdered corpse, there is no shortage of suspects. However, since Prof. Higgins had a very public beef with Nepommuck, Higgins becomes the police department’s primary suspect. In order to keep Higgins from going to prison for a murder he didn’t commit, Eliza, Higgins, and Pickering must investigate and uncover the real culprit themselves.

Most authors who attempt to appropriate other writers’ creations for their own benefit usually end up making a huge debacle of the whole thing, and this book is no exception.

None of the characters bear even a fleeting resemblance to their original selves. Narcissistic bachelor Henry Higgins is now incredibly sensitive and awash with love…what? Street-wise urchin Eliza is a burbling mess after a few hours in a police holding cell. None of it makes any sense.

The writing itself is atrocious. The authors make a painful spectacle of inserting well-known bits from the musical into the narrative at every tiresome opportunity: “She may not have liked him, but over the past two months she’d grown accustomed to his smug little face.” & “All they needed was a little bit of luck.” Urgh. It couldn’t possibly get any worse, could it?

Well, yes, unfortunately it can. It seems the authors couldn’t be bothered to research common idioms used by London’s Edwardian street hawkers in order to add some realism to Eliza’s speech, so they just took the phrase ‘blooming arse’ and had her say it repeatedly…over & over… throughout the entire book…the ENTIRE book. It’s almost as though it were a game to see how many times they could write ‘blooming arse’ before their editor put a stop to it; it appears there was no editor, so things ended up getting way out of hand…& it’s the reader who suffers

The ending is even more embarrassing. The story concludes with a third rate Three Stooges slapstick routine in which Eliza hijacks a stage production of Hamlet, knocks down the sets, spouts random quotations in her Cockney accent, and ends up slicing through Hamlet’s tights so he moons the audience. Throw in a transvestite actor and Prof. Higgins’ secret love child and you’ll realize what a low-brow bastardization of Pygmalion this atrocity really is.

I feel so sorry for George Bernard Shaw as he turns over uncomfortably in his grave.… (mais)

Eliza Doolittle wins Professor Henry Higgin’s bet that a Cockney flower girl could be groomed and pass for a duchess. Then she takes a job as an assistant to Emil Nepommuck, who then claims credit for Eliza’s transformation.

Higgins calls Nepommuck out on it, publicly. When Nepommuck is found dead, Higgins becomes Scotland Yard’s top suspect.

Eliza discovers that Higgins isn’t the only one who has a bone to pick with Nipommuck, seems all of his pupils also see him as a fraud. The problem is blackmail is involved in the cases — and no on wants to talk.

The characters of “My Fair Lady” are together, but under different circumstances, as they both work to find the real murderer. From the aristocratic world of Edwardian Mayfair to the East End, back alleys and Drury Lane, Eliza searches to solve the mystery.

A fun and light read.… (mais)