Tom Sharpe's novels tend to have a relatively simple plot in a relatively average environment, and then things start to go wrong on page one due to the most crazy misunderstandings, leading to amazingly hilarious situations throughout the book, and Grantchester Grind is no different.  It is the sequel to Porterhouse Blue, the satirical tale of a (typical) Oxbridge college with all its clichés enlarged to the max.

One of the oldest colleges in Cambridge and most definitely the most conservative yet least conserved, The Porterhouse College, is in financial dire straits.  For the time being th Dons are unaware, but a solution is on the way from two different directions.  first there is Lady Mary, the widow of the previous Master, who stubbornly believes her husband was murdered despite all sorts of inquiries that gave evidence of the opposite.  She decides to anonymously fund the Sir Godber Evans Memorial Fellowship, whose fellow has only one task: find out the truth about the late Godber Evans.  She is prepared to pay 6 million pounds for this fellowship, a bate the college cannot refuse.  The search for a suitable fellow though will prove a serious test for the poor Lady's nerves.

And then there is Transworld Television Productions, whose leading figure Edgar Hartang is looking for a money laundering system.  His personal assistant, Karl Kudzuvine, contacts the college's Bursar thinking he is someone else.  He convinces the old man to shoot some pictures at the college, and that's where the enthusiasm of the TTP team starts to overthrow Hartang's careful plan when they cause so much damage the college asks TTP to pay for the repairs - running to several millions.

As usual with Sharpe I had quite a few laughs.  He has the reputation of being the funniest writer in English today, and this book lives up to that reputation.  It's the usual mix of strange sexual ideas, drunk confessions, and great misunderstandings.  Never coarse, never pedestrian, despite those rather obvious misunderstandings the plot is not too twisted: one can actually read this as a "true story" - be it probably that if you do that you'll never look at an Oxbridge college with the same eyes...