I was not able to read this book the whole way through to the end, unfortunately.The main character, Thea, was not very sympathetic. She was lacking in vigour and determination. Various threads of her life featured in the book (particularly her relationships with her husband, her father, her daug...
Fifty-five-year-old Jim Lapsford makes an unusually healthy-looking corpse. A life-long devotee of vitamin pills and herbal remedies, it seems almost ironic that he has succumbed to a heart attack, but his doctor is convinced that this is the case. Trainee undertaker Drew Slocombe isn't so sure. ...
A Cotswold Ordeal is the second in Rebecca Tope's series, each book set in a different village in the gorgeous landscape of England's Cotswold hills. This time, our house-sitting heroine Thea is hired to mind the house, ailing pony, frightening geese, and other animals of a family that has gone o...
When irascible farmer Guy Beardon meets a very dirty death in his own farmyard, it seems like an accident at first, despite the fact that he was widely disliked. But when his daughter Lilah slowly begins to suspect foul play, no one is eager to help her investigation. Suspicion becomes certainty ...
After two disastrous housesitting incidents in which she unwittingly became embroiled in murder and mayhem, Thea Osbourne is only too happy to have a bit of peace and quiet. The only positive thing that came out of her experiences is her blossoming relationship with DI Phil Hollis and she relishe...
Phil shook his head. ‘Nothing unusual. A powerful blow to the head with something pointed, like your Bible woman and her tent peg.’ ‘Oh.’ ‘You sound disappointed.’ ‘No. Only that I was sort of hoping there’d be something a bit more ritualistic. Something out of one of Janey’s saint stories. Take ...
The fort is well built, with tall poles making a stout palisade. Great rivers on all sides lead to good pasture, and our beasts have been well fed and rested. Two letters awaited us from Reuben, who was well at the time of writing and learning the skills of soldiering. He had seen no action in ba...
I even became convinced that he would indeed fashion a vehicle for me to ride in. He abandoned the sheep, as he had threatened, and spent the next two days in the barn, banging and chiselling, using timber from the woodstore beside the hut. The wheel was his chief difficulty. It should have an ir...
Certainly it was a conversation-stopper. Judith stammered, ‘Murdered?’ but otherwise there was silence. Brendan Teasdale pushed himself further into the house, and closed the door behind himself. Hepzie trotted up to him, clearly intending to jump up at his knees, but then...
Since Drew had reached the conclusion that he could weather the burial the following day in spite of not having concluded his investigations, his new-found confidence seemed to get stronger as the day wore on. He dated it from the moment when he realised that Genevieve had been there, with a dead...
Kathy sat quiet and pale beside her, fully aware of Simmy’s fragile mood. The absence of questions and guesses reminded Simmy of how well she and Kathy had always got along. They had been known to spend a contented hour together over a picnic lunch or simply sitting in a park watching ducks, bare...
It was just short of two-thirty when she heard his shuffling feet on the threshold of the open front door. ‘Hello?’ he called breathlessly. ‘Can I come in?’ Hepzie trotted ahead to welcome him, but did not jump up at his unsteady legs. He nudged her gently with his walking stick and she backed aw...
It was so close to the scene she had imagined the night before that she wondered for a moment whether she might be dreaming. But no – her wrist was hurting where she had landed on it, and she was definitely sitting on a hard concrete surface that was glazed with ice. Hepzie was nuzzling her in co...
‘Why bother with a letter when she knows I’ll be speaking to her today, anyway?’ ‘Manners, I suppose,’ suggested Karen. ‘And I think she’s got too much time on her hands, all these weeks of holiday from college.’ ‘I don’t remember that being a problem for you when you were teaching.’ ‘No, well ...
Thea enjoyed two minutes of slow awakening before the trouble started. Downstairs, Gwennie began to bark. Not the one-note yap which said I’m awake, so you should be too but an urgent string of throaty sounds that suggested there was actually something to be worried about. ...
The prospect of a holiday in the Lake District appalled and enraged him. The car journey had made him feel sick; his small brother had received unfair quantities of attention. His very natural response was to pull Lucy’s hair and scratch her cheek. In reply, she had pushed him hard, sending him r...
Hugo was told to stay by the fire and do nothing to alarm. Carola sat at the piano and picked out a tune she remembered from Charleston days. ‘Louder!’ Fanny encouraged. ‘They have to hear it out in the street.’ She threw a handful of lavender on top of the stove, hoping to create an enticing sce...
Freddy and Basil were not on their chains, there were no welcoming barks, no friendly faces peering from their shed. Fighting to remain calm, Thea went all round the yard looking into the various sheds and logpiles, then did a circuit of the house, calling ‘Dogs! Dogs!’ across the weedy jungle th...
Lilah was on the tractor, scraping mucky straw from the cows’ sleeping quarters, while the animals milled about in the gathering yard. Strands of police tape had been strung across a section of the yard, with the intention of safeguarding a spot where the previous evening’s searches had found blo...
A road which Den presumed almost nobody outside west Devon would ever have cause to notice. And yet it was as beautiful as many a more famous stretch of highway. As it approached the river Tamar, it rendered views guaranteed to suspend a person’s breath. He had intended to...
Then questions began to form. ‘Were you watching me? In the garden?’ she asked, with a frown. The idea was distinctly unwelcome. ‘No, of course not. I heard you moaning and came out to see what had happened. My door and windows were open, and you did make quite a noise.’ ‘...
Even with only two mourners, and with everything well in hand, Maggs and I were fully absorbed in the preparations. We seldom had more than one burial a week, which meant that every one was important. This is not to say that every funeral isn’t important to much larger and busier undertakers, but...
Her view of the street was patchy, and there was no way she could be sure of Bonnie’s movements from there, but she was content for the moment to be close enough to be of some use if there was trouble. In a few minutes she would phone the girl and ask if she was all right, without revealing how n...
Her college course in hotel management included a busy timetable of lectures and tutorials on that day. The end of term also fell on this particular Friday, with none of the whirl of excitement and relaxation of schedules that Simmy remembered. ‘There’s a lecture in the morning, and a meeting wit...
The bullet was removed from her head in an operation that lasted three hours, and which left the surgeons trembling and sweating. They had expected her to die under their probing forceps at any moment. It was a .22 bullet, and although cautious about making premature assum...
‘But she must be … what … forty years younger than him. She can’t be.’ ‘Half-sister, of course,’ Gladwin elaborated. ‘Child of a district nurse who visited the Meadows when the wife had a septic leg. Thirty-two years ago. The old man was over seventy …’Thea tried to do the arithmetic. ‘Nearly eig...
‘I should pay you,’ Simmy realised. ‘We haven’t discussed that side of things at all. How very unbusinesslike of me.’ ‘Oh, just some pocket money will do for now. You don’t have to get into all the paperwork and tax and stuff, as far as I’m concerned.’ A girl after Russell Straw’s heart, Simmy th...