Don't Point That Thing At Me by Kyril Bonfiglioli - Book 1 of the Mortdecai Trilogy, now a major motion picture starring Johnny Depp Introducing the Hon. Charlie Mortdecai, art dealer, aristocrat and assassin, in the first of the Mortdecai novels Portly art dealer and seasoned epicurean Charlie Mortdecai comes into possesion of a stolen Goya, the disappearance of which is causing a diplomatic ruction between Spain and its allies. Not that that matters to Charlie...until compromising pictures of some British diplomats also come into his possession and start to muddy the waters. All he's trying to do is make a dishonest living, but various governments, secret organizations and an unbelievably nubile young German don't see it that way and pretty soon he's in great need of his thuggish man

Something Nasty in the Woodshed - the third Charlie Mortdecai novel.
'Spring was infesting the air in no uncertain fashion and I awoke, for once, with a feeling of well-being and an urge to go for long country walks.' Charlie Mortdecai - minor aristocrat and art-dealer banished from London for crimes against, well, art - has decamped to the tiny island of Jersey with his wife Johanna and manservant Jock. There, amidst tax dodgers and inbred natives, he had hoped to lie low, and sink lower. But when a friend's wife is attacked, Charlie is forced to turn sleuth to discover the perpetrator. As further attacks occur, of an increasingly Satanic nature, Charlie finds he is desperate to solve the crimes before things turn truly Hellish...

Kyril Bonfiglioli was born on the so