If Preston Sturges and Anthony Trollope had collaborated on a breezy how-to manual for pickpocketing, forgery, house burglary, counterfeiting, and murdering a few of your closest relatives, it might have turned out a little like this light-fingered caper about all those things and more.

TENNYSON TYMPANY starts with death by falling brontosaurus and a fortune built on toothpaste-filled golf balls, and vaults from there to ever greater nonsense-taking for granted that, left to their own devices, unprotected young readers will naturally thrill to screwball mayhem and ten-dollar words and the triumph of the moderately wicked over the insufferably good.