If you are ready to join the cult, Mortdecai is readily available.
The character Charlie Mortdecai first appeared in a series of comic noir novels by British author Kyril Bonfiglioli (1928–1985).
The Series (in order):
An unfinished fourth novel, The Mortdecai ABC, was completed by Craig Brown and published in 2018.
Tone & Style:
The books are a unique blend of black comedy, satire, and crime caper. Bonfiglioli was heavily influenced by P.G. Wodehouse (for wit and prose style) and Ian Fleming (for espionage thrills). The result is a sophisticated, cynical, and absurdly funny series.
Films like The Big Lebowski and Showgirls took years to find their audience. Mortdecai is on that same trajectory, albeit with a much lower ceiling. Here is why the Mortdecai fanbase is growing.
“I was enjoying myself immensely, which is always a danger sign.”
“Jock, if you don’t stop killing people, we’ll never get invited anywhere nice.”
“Johanna said I had the morals of a snake and the ethics of a second-hand car dealer. I was rather flattered.”
“The trouble with being a coward is that it requires so much effort to stay alive.”
It began, as these things so often do, with a woman, a wager, and a regrettable amount of chilled Sauternes.
I, Charles Mortdecai—art dealer, rogue, and, on this particular Tuesday, reluctant detective—was reclining in my Mayfair townhouse, attempting to explain to my manservant, Jock, that a velvet smoking jacket is not “dressing like a plumped-up magpie” but rather “a tribute to the dusky opulence of the Venetian twilight.” Jock, who has the aesthetic sensitivity of a startled bulldog, merely grunted and polished a silver salvo with increasing violence.
“A lady to see you, sir,” he announced, his tone suggesting the lady in question was likely carrying a subpoena.
She was, in fact, carrying considerably more. Lady Annabel Spode swept into the room like a winter storm in diamonds. Tall, imperious, and possessed of a jawline that had launched a thousand regimental bets, she fixed me with a gaze that could curdle cream at forty paces. mortdecai
“Mortdecai. I need a forgery.”
“My dear lady,” I said, smoothing my mustache—a magnificent handlebar creation that deserves its own postcode. “You flatter me. But I deal in authentic masterpieces. Usually ones that have recently fallen off the back of a lorry.”
“I don’t want a painting. I want a lobster.”
Jock paused his polishing. “Called it,” he muttered.
The story, as it spilled forth, was pure vintage Spode. Her husband, Lord Algernon Spode, had lost the family’s heirloom—a solid-gold, jewel-encrusted lobster named “Claudius” (don’t ask)—to a nefarious Cornish smuggler-turned-casino-owner called Silas “The Eel” Tremayne. The wager had taken place at Tremayne’s floating casino, the Mermaid’s Revenge, moored off St. Ives. Algernon, three sheets to the wind and convinced he could beat a man who literally cheated gravity, had staked Claudius against a crate of Tremayne’s “prize-winning” pasties.
He lost. Obviously.
Annabel needed a replica—a perfect, undetectable fake—to swap back before Algernon’s mother, the Dowager Duchess, noticed the lobster’s absence during the annual “Crustacean Gala” (a real event, I assure you, as tedious as it sounds).
“The fee,” she said, placing a small velvet pouch on the table. The clink inside was the sound of my next three mortgages dissolving.
“Jock,” I said, rising. “Pack the tweed. And the small crowbar. We’re going to Cornwall.”
Cornwall, I discovered, is damp. It is also full of people who say “me ‘ansome” and mean something vaguely threatening. Tremayne’s casino was a rotting paddle-steamer painted gold, moored in a foggy estuary. Inside, the air smelled of desperation, cheap perfume, and slightly-off scallops.
I located Tremayne himself at a roulette table. He had the face of a friendly undertaker—all oiled charm and hidden calipers. His fingers, when he raked in chips, moved like a pianist playing a concerto of theft.
“Mr. Mortdecai,” he said, without looking up. “The man who once sold a fake Canaletto to the Vatican. I’ve heard of you.”
“Acquired,” I corrected, smoothing my mustache. “The Vatican has a very generous return policy.” If you are ready to join the cult,
Over brandies that tasted of regret, I proposed a trade: a painting from my personal collection—a minor but authentic Corot—in exchange for Claudius the Lobster. Tremayne’s eyes glittered. He agreed. That was my first mistake.
My second was leaving Jock alone with the casino’s “complimentary” shellfish platter.
The swap was set for midnight in the casino’s humidarium—a glass-domed room full of tropical ferns and the world’s most depressed parrots. I brought the Corot. Tremayne brought the lobster. Claudius sat on a velvet cushion, his ruby eyes gleaming, his gold claws frozen in a gesture of eternal, crustacean disdain.
As I reached for the lobster, Tremayne snapped his fingers. The lights went out.
When they came back on, the Corot was gone. The lobster was gone. And in their place was a single, glistening, very real lobster—alive, furious, and somehow holding my wallet in its smaller claw.
“That’s not Claudius,” I said.
“No,” Tremayne agreed, stepping out of the shadows with a revolver. “That’s Kevin. He’s my pet. And you, Mortdecai, have just admitted to possessing a forgery. Because the painting you brought? It’s the fake. The real Corot is in my safe. And now I have you for fraud.”
He had me. It was, I admit, a neat trap. Except for one thing.
The back wall of the humidarium exploded inward.
Jock burst through the shattered glass, covered in seaweed, holding a fire extinguisher in one hand and a half-eaten pasty in the other. He had, as he later explained, “followed the smell of treachery.” Also, he’d been locked in the kitchen after insulting the chef’s crab bisque. The fire extinguisher was acquired during his escape.
What followed was not elegant. Jock sprayed Tremayne in the face with foam, Kevin the Lobster clamped onto Tremayne’s nose, and I—with considerable dignity—scooped up the fake Claudius (which, upon inspection, was actually the real one; Tremayne had swapped them earlier that evening, the clever eel) and made for the exit.
We escaped via the lifeboat, rowing furiously as the Mermaid’s Revenge drifted toward a submerged rock. Behind us, Tremayne’s screams were muffled by foam and crustacean.
Back in Mayfair, Lady Annabel examined Claudius. “It’s exquisite,” she breathed. The character Charlie Mortdecai first appeared in a
“The real one,” I said. “Tremayne never had the genuine article. Algernon lost a fake. He’d had it copied years ago. The real lobster has been in your attic the whole time, gathering dust behind the croquet set.”
She stared. “How do you know?”
“Because,” I said, pouring myself a large whisky, “I made the fake. Fifteen years ago. For Algernon’s father. The old rogue.”
And with that, I retrieved my Corot—which I had, of course, also swapped earlier that day for a very convincing poster of a bowl of fruit—and retired to my study.
Jock brought me a fresh Sauternes. “So we stole a lobster that was already theirs, swapped a painting that was already ours, and ruined a casino owner’s evening for no reason.”
“No reason?” I said, gesturing to the velvet pouch on the desk. “My dear Jock. The reason is sitting right there. Also, I’ve always wanted to see a man get bitten on the nose by a crustacean. Tick that one off the list.”
Jock grunted. But I swear—just for a moment—the corner of his mouth twitched.
It might have been the Sauternes. But I prefer to think it was admiration.
Imagine if Bertie Wooster (from Jeeves) was a sociopath, and Jeeves was a thuggish, loyal, and extremely violent Cockney ex-con. That is Charlie Mortdecai.
In the sprawling graveyard of big-budget Hollywood misfires, few tombstones are as gaudy, confusing, or fascinating as that of Mortdecai.
Released in January 2015—a month studios traditionally use to dispose of cinematic corpses—Mortdecai was intended to launch a franchise. Instead, it became a legendary punchline. With a production budget of $60 million (plus marketing), it grossed a paltry $47.3 million worldwide. It won the Razzie Award for Worst Actor (Johnny Depp) and was nominated for several more. Critics savaged it with a 12% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with headlines calling it "offensively unfunny" and "a career-low."
And yet, nearly a decade later, the search term Mortdecai refuses to fade into obscurity. Why?
Because buried beneath the bad mustache and worse reviews is a paradox: a film so aggressively, unapologetically weird that it has quietly amassed a cult following. This is the story of Mortdecai—how a disaster became a curiosity, and how a cynical cash-grab turned into a bizarre artifact of 21st-century cinema.
