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    The Judge Hunter
    The Judge Hunter
    The Judge Hunter
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Judge Hunter

    Written by Christopher Buckley

    Narrated by James Langton

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    The latest comic novel from Christopher Buckley, in which a hapless Englishman embarks on a dangerous mission to the New World in pursuit of two judges who helped murder a king.

    London, 1664. Twenty years after the English revolution, the monarchy has been restored and Charles II sits on the throne. The men who conspired to kill his father are either dead or disappeared. Baltasar “Balty” St. Michel is twenty-four and has no skills and no employment. He gets by on handouts from his brother-in-law Samuel Pepys, an officer in the king’s navy.

    Fed up with his needy relative, Pepys offers Balty a job in the New World. He is to track down two missing judges who were responsible for the execution of the last king, Charles I. When Balty’s ship arrives in Boston, he finds a strange country filled with fundamentalist Puritans, saintly Quakers, warring tribes of Indians, and rogues of every stripe. Helped by a man named Huncks, an agent of the Crown with a mysterious past, Balty travels colonial America in search of the missing judges. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, Samuel Pepys prepares for a war with the Dutch that fears England has no chance of winning.

    Christopher Buckley’s enchanting new novel spins adventure, comedy, political intrigue, and romance against a historical backdrop with real-life characters like Charles II, John Winthrop, and Peter Stuyvesant. Buckley’s wit is as sharp as ever as he takes readers to seventeenth-century London and New England. We visit the bawdy court of Charles II, Boston under the strict Puritan rule, and New Amsterdam back when Manhattan was a half-wild outpost on the edge of an unmapped continent. The Judge Hunter is a smart and swiftly plotted novel that transports readers to a new world.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateMay 1, 2018
    ISBN9781508255673
    Author

    Christopher Buckley

    Christopher Buckley is a novelist, essayist, humorist, critic, magazine editor, and memoirist. His books include Thank You for Smoking, The Judge Hunter, Make Russia Great Again, and The Relic Master. He worked as a merchant seaman and White House speechwriter. He was awarded the Thurber Prize for American Humor and the Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence.

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    Reviews for The Judge Hunter

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    • 5/5
      A great read. Classic Christopher Buckley. Smart funny and more.
    • 3/5
      in general I love Christopher Buckley. this book is rather different from his usual. it is an historical fiction. it is humorous and so the history is not dissonant as in so many such books.
    • 4/5
      Second in a series of fun historical novels, this one dealing peripherally with the beginning of the American in the 17th century. Sure the language used at times is anachronistic, but it is all part of the fun ultimately. Worth the read.
    • 4/5
      Samuel Pepys has a problem. The incessant diarist of the 17th century has successfully negotiated himself into a position of minor power in the Restoration government of King Charles II after having inconveniently supported Oliver Cromwell and the Roundheads in the overthrow of Charles I. Life would be reasonably tolerable if not for his wife’s brother, Balthasar, a ne’er-do-well content to sponge off Pepys as a more appealing alternative to getting and keeping a job. If only Sam could find some way of getting Balty out of his life and his purse!The answer to Pepys’ prayers, at least in the pages of Christopher Buckley’s latest satirical novel (Simon & Schuster, 2018), seems to come when he stumbles upon a plan to send Balty to the American Colonies on a vague quest to search for two judges who were responsible for condemning Charles I to execution. Once landed in the Massachusetts colony, Balty is taken under the wing of one Hiram Huncks, who is ostensibly going to help Balty find the judges but may have his own agenda.Buckley is a master at historical satire, weaving comedic hijinks throughout an otherwise historically faithful account. Between yuks in The Judge Hunter, he delivers plenty of solid history about the founders of the American colonies, whether English or Dutch. The severe Puritans who founded the Massachusetts colony are reliably skewered, as are the even stricter sect that split for Connecticut when they thought Massachusetts was getting a little too loosey-goosey (narrator: they were not), and the Quakers who refused to renounce their faith despite severe persecution. I learned more about the second Anglo-Dutch War (truthfully, I’m not sure I even remembered there had been a first one) than I ever learned in school. “Excerpts” from Pepys’ famous diary are scattered throughout the narrative, and it was nice to have confirmation in the afterword that all but one or two were entirely made up. Too bad, because Buckley almost had me convinced to tackle the many-volumed classic work.At the outset, I was concerned that Buckley was serving up too heavy a dose of slapstick, which would rapidly wear thin. Happily, as the plot progresses the characters acquire some more substantial traits than mere deliverers or receivers of punch lines, giving the overall work a pleasant depth.The Judge Hunter is a worthy follow-up to Buckley’s first historical satire, The Relic Master, which set its skewed sights on the 16th century trade in saints’ remains. Buckley has stated his intention to continue the series with books set in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Based on past performance, those will be worth keeping an eye out for.
    • 5/5
      ...'then they took New York!'Another brilliant parody of history depicted by Christopher Buckley. This exposé, the story of Stuvyesant and the English attainment of New York, within the context of the Dutch-English wars casts our eyes back in a refreshingly new way.Samuel Pepys, his position and his diaries are the hook to begin with. His brother-in-law gives us the subtext. Baltasar “Balty” St. Michel is an annoying nincompoop whom Pepys manages to have dispatched to the new world to track down the judges who'd sentenced Charles 1. Charles II is still determined to see them pay.To cut a funny story short Balty, fumbling in the best traditions of '1066 and all that', or a Mel Brooksian movie at the very least, manages to shape history, along with the taciturn spy Huncks, whom one can't help but feel sorry for, being saddled with this Rowan Atkinson type figure. The commentary on the practices by the 'godly' is illuminating bringing to the fore the stringent effects of religious laws on communities. The treatment of both the Indians and other religious groups like the Quakers by these puritanical pilgrims shows the disconnect between faith and grace. There really is much than can be unpacked in Buckley's work. The casual introduction of famed figures is wonderful, with hilarious added touches that only a fictionalized account can allow. Hence Stuyvesant's Brazilian parrot, who makes a nicely framed presence on the book cover, offers us a question right from the get go, did we but know it.Slickly written, a comic, yet true look at history through jaded and not so jaded eyes. Hidden away is at least one nod to the current political contretemps when Stuyvesant muses that they need a bigger wall to keep the English out and perhaps he can persuade Charles II to build it.Read the who's who at the end to see well known descendants of the various figures portrayed. Quite an eye opener.I loved every minute of this witty foray into the early times of the 17th century New World.A NetGalley ARC
    • 3/5
      Christopher Buckley is determined to write political satire for each century. His latest book The Judge Hunter places the reader in 1664, using Samuel Pepys as the mainstay and his foppish brother-in-law Balthasar (Balty) St. Michel as his tool as the story moves between London and the New England Colonies and New Amsterdam. Torys, Papists, Puritans, Quakers and numerous tribes of native Americans all find a place in this political romp.Balty is our guide in the New World. He is a disaster who is repeatedly saved by Colonial Hiram Huncks. Together they defy any number of ambushes and questionable situations while on Balty’s quest to hunt down the Judges who were partially responsible for the death of King Charles I of England. This is but a part of the story and this is where the book hits a snag. Balty is on one mission and unbeknownst to Balty, Huncks is on a very different undertaking. The two adventures never seem to cohere and unify the plot.Trying to reach back to my middle school American History education I found that my knowledge of this period was sketchy. Buckley gives a thorough description of the history, and geographical delineation of the various sects interspersed with his trademark humor. Unfortunately much of it fell flat when taken with the barbarity and intolerance of the times. Most of the players were self-serving and unsympathetic. A few compassionate Quakers were thrown into the mix as a ploy to keep the whole from being so badly tainted. The political intrigue was slowly parceled out and kept my attention but I always felt as if there should be more to the story.I didn’t enjoy the story as much as his foray into the 16th century with The Relic Master. I appreciated the inclusion in the Historical Notes of the progeny between the 17th Century genealogy and the present. Imagine Princess Diana being the descendant of the King’s mistress who bore him 5 illegitimate children.Thank you NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for an ARC.