Jude and Carole are friends in the small town of Fethering. They have lunch together in their local pub, the Crown and Anchor, and are victims of food poisoning. Their friend Ted Crisp, the pub's owner, is soon the focus of too many incidents to be accidental and then the pub is the location of ...
I have read most of the books of this series. I like this as a mystery. It is difficult to make an amateur duo work, but Brett does a very good job of that. What I really did not like about this one was the overly mean spiritedness of Carol. She has been self absorbed in the earlier books, which ...
This is another series that I've kept up with over the years. This British "Fethering Mystery" features Carole Seddon, a retired Home Office civil servant and her friend, Jude, a healing consultant. These two friends are on total opposite end of the spectrum--Carole is very stiff-upper lip uptigh...
I gave this 4 stars simply because I love the Fethering series and it's characters. The story was good with a simple plot. Typical of Brett, the villain is usually a side character that is rarely seen and everything gets linked together by a slim coincidence. Carol is the more realistic charac...
Newsreader Bill Stratton has to do some soul searching when, on the verge of his 60th birthday, his wife tells him that she is leaving him for another man, and worse still, she has never been happy in their 40-year marriage.
Surprise, surprise! I had read this one before. I didn't recognize the title (although it should be memorable) before picking it up, but as I went on it started sounding more familiar. Typical with me, although I remembered bits and pieces of it, most of it was still a mystery to me and required ...
Carol Seddon is a new trustee for Brackets, former home of somewhat second-string 20th century author Esmond Chadleigh, most famous for the lament he wrote about his brother's death in WWI and his own happy family life. Then a body at least 50 years buried shows up in the former kitchen gardens, ...
A rising young stage comedian, who is about to receive his profession's award as Most Promising Newcomer, dies sensationally on stage at the start of his act; as he picks up the mike, he is electrocuted. Faulty wiring seems to be the cause; no one person's to blame; a verdict of death by misadven...
Charles Paris, Simon Brett's actor-cum-accidental sleuth, returns to the boards in this seventeenth novel in the popular series. When he is offered the chance to go on tour as a member of the cast of Not On Your Wife!, a new play by a prolific British farceur, he seizes the opportunity. The p...
'An Amateur Corpse' is another fascinating Simon Brett mystery set in the backdrop of theater. Charles Paris is a part-time detective and professional actor, drawn into the affairs of an amateur theater company. Charles's friend Hugo's wife is murdered, and Hugo is charged with the crime. Par...
This is one of those charming cozy mysteries, in the vein of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, portraying a quaint, quirky English village, of the type which probably only exists in fiction as it's so quaint and so quirky as to be unreal, and its quaint, quirky inhabitants. (And, yes, I'm going to ...
Book 2. in this series by Simon Brett, featuring once again, retired Home Office employee, Carole Seddon and her next-door-neighbour, Jude. Incidentally, Carole still does not know Jude's surname and is no closer to knowing a great deal about Jude than she was when they first met. Carole is out f...
BBC Radio 4 Full Cast Drama starring Bill Nighy as Charles Paris and featuring Suzanne Burden as his estranged wife, Frances. On a TV detective series members of the cast and crew begin to meet mysterious ends. Actor cum amateur sleuth, Charles Paris, invistigates...
Published by Dell 1984, 1st thus.(#0-440-16145-2) Publisher edition: Murder Ink (alternative cover art matching Murder Ink series). Part of a complete Charles Paris collection for sale by owner
Unfortunately at the moment Goodreads has presented both the original Simon Brett novel and the modernized full-cast radio drama as a single entry forcing me to combine my thoughts on the two versions of the story.While the radio play does make some slight changes to the material they are for the...
Having read "The Dead Side of the Mike," the sixth Charles Paris mystery, and liking it, I was curious to see how it all began, so I purchased a collection of the first four. I was able to find an inexpensive collection of the first four novels, although, curiously, the collection had the novels ...
Brett introduces Melita Pargeter, his newest detective. Melita is a rich and vivacious widow whose mystery-solving talents come in handy when a murderer stalks a hotel for retirees.
I unexpectedly found this on my bookshelf last night, and don't ever remember having read it before. One of those acquisitions on a whim presumably, which I'd put aside and forgotten about. What a find! I have a soft spot for cozies but there are so many out there now, they can become tediously s...
With the help of some unsavory associates, Mrs. Pargeter investigates the bizarre death of the recently widowed Joyce Dover, tracing Joyce's supposedly dead husband from South America, to England, to Corfu.
Mrs. Pargeter doesn't much like diets. She never felt any need to change her own pleasingly ample figure, but she's happy enough to accompany her slimming-obsessed friend Kim Thurrock for a few days' stay at the exclusive Brotherton Hall health spa. There's one condition, however. Mrs. Pargeter...
I do hope the Pargeter cycle picks up. On the surface it looks like so much fun, but Volume Two misses the mark as much as Volume One did, in a different way. From Miss Marple we move to a Jessica Fletcher vibe as Mrs Pargeter buys a house. But woman who rents limosines, routinely dresses in mink...
When Carole goes for a hair trim at 'Connies Clip Joint', she doesn't expect to find herself at the scene of a murder. But sure enough in the backroom, strangled by the cord of a hairdryer, sits Connie's young assistant, Kyra. Whilst Carole and her sleuthing friend Jude enjoy some tactical snoo...
The Hopwicke Country House Hotel, owned by Jude's glamorous friend Suzy Longthorne, is to host an event for the all-male society, The Pillars of Sussex. On the night, Jude helps Suzy serve dinner, and in the early hours of the morning they watch with relief as the guests drag themselves to their ...
What a shock indeed--who would have thought murder could replace a good education and hard work as the keys to corporate success and upward mobility?
The desk sergeant, though different from the one who had been on duty the night before, was apparently under instructions to make the prisoner aware of the enormity of his crime. He made a big production of returning Charles’s bag, his pocket contents, shoelaces and belt. All of the sergeant’s sl...
The stableyard taste in his mouth suggested he’d passed out before cleaning his teeth the night before. Nausea lurked in the cobwebs at the bottom of his throat. Why did he do it? Convivial drinking with other people was at least fun while it was happening; drinking alone was nothing more nor les...
He also woke early, round seven o’clock, so he dressed quickly and left his digs before he could be subjected to more of Mimi’s gloomy omniscience and another of her cremated breakfasts. He had woken up with a good intention and he wanted to realize it before it too got laid on the hardcore to he...
Their departure was now quite urgent. In little more than half an hour Carole’s saga of convents and placentas would be starting. The St Mary’s Hall car park was in darkness as they came out of the pub, but when they crossed the beam of a sensor an overhead light came on. In spite of the time pre...
House, 235–9 Lisson Avenue, London NW 1 3PQ. 18th July, 1979. Dear Charles, Just a quick note to say how super last night’s show was and to thank you for all the hard work you’re putting into this very exciting series. A few days rest now, which I’m sure you’ll be glad of, and then . . . on with ...
The flight on which pop sensation Boymeetzgirl were arriving from their tour of Poland had been delayed by two hours, and the Sergeant was bored stiff. Also it looked as if the whole policing operation was going to be entirely unnecessary. Boymeetzgirl were evidently not quite as big a pop sensat...
Chapter Thirteen HE KNEW IT was silly to be influenced by Macbeth, and yet there was a kind of logic about it. A crime committed by a man, but instigated by a woman. The idea of Felicia Chatterton as an unwitting Lady Macbeth to Russ Lavery’s callow Macbeth made an ugly kind of sense. From the ve...
‘Why, are you suggesting she was murdered?’ ‘I’m not suggesting anything, Mr Paris. Merely trying to ascertain some facts, which will provide a background to the circumstances of her death.’ Detective Inspector Shelley’s manner was as formal as his language. It was impossible to know what he was ...
So he read it. Mario, the barman, had handed it over. Having a variety of postal addresses in pubs and bars all over London was a habit Larry had developed in less opulent days, and one that he had not attempted to break after his marriage to Lydia. The sort of letters he received had changed, th...
The vegetables suffered from that sogginess endemic to British institutional food (and rather too much British restaurant food), but otherwise the meal tasted all right. And the prices were amazingly low. Delmoleen subsidised its employees’ eating generously. Any sneaking hope he had had that the...
There’s so much one can do with language beyond merely passing on narratives. Rather than opening up the potentialities locked in language, plotting can limit them.” Sebastian Trent stood with an arm resting nonchalantly along the mantelpiece of his artfully lived-in sitting room. His...
‘Madeleine. Why shouldn’t it be me?’ ‘I was afraid your wife might answer. I suppose I’d just have rung off if she had.’ ‘You needn’t worry. I always answer the phone.’ ‘You’re more mobile, I suppose, than she is.’ Bernard neither confirmed nor denied this. ‘Just assume that you’re safe to ring m...
A TALE OF A TRUMPET HE WAS ALONE in the bed when he awoke. There was a note on the pillow. GONE TO REHEARSAL. IF I DON’T SEE YOU DURING THE DAY, SEE YOU TONIGHT? He smiled and rolled out of bed to make some leisurely coffee. He drank it at the window, looking down on shoppers and tourists, foresh...
Gerald Hume.” “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t recognize your voice.” She should have done. Those precise, clipped tones were very distinctive. “How nice to hear from you.” “Have you finished the Times crossword?” “I did most of it over break...
Julian himself was in the front room, marooned wretchedly on an island of bottles, glasses and ash-trays. ‘Oh, Charles, thank God you’ve come back. I need someone to talk to. It’s started.’ ‘Started?’ ‘The baby.’ ‘Oh yes.’ He nearly added ‘I’d completely forgotten’, but decided that might show an...
NAUSEA: Well, whoever that man might be, He should have gone to Specsavers! TV’s Mr Sex stormed out of Starbucks rather petulantly. Tad said he’d check the contractual situation with his agent, and then probably explore flights to LA. He’d thought for some time that the main focus of his career f...
Her loneliness would have been too raw, she would once again have been horrified at the idea of provoking pity. But because she had had what she was thinking of increasingly as ‘a normal Christmas’, she did not hesitate in dialling Jude’s number the minute she got home. Another person might have ...
In other words, there was a varied mix of untaxing items, the presenters smiled a lot, and very few words were spoken unsupported by pictures. Laura was pleased with her contribution. Lumbered with doing vox pops rather than anything more creative, she had produced vox pops that stood out. She th...
After all, if their surmise was correct, they were about to confront a young man who might well be a murderer. Having guarded his privacy so fiercely for three weeks, how was he likely to react to the discovery of his hideaway? If he had already killed Kyra Bartos, would he be worried about the k...
‘We’re going to kill him,’ Natalie announced. Trevor looked shocked. ‘Kill George? But—’ ‘Well, come on, he’s never going to divorce me. How else can you and I be together – for ever?’ ‘Things’re OK like they are now . . . aren’t they?’ Trevor suggested tentatively. ‘We see each other every day a...
It seemed really to matter to him that she should like the game and she found his enthusiasm infectious. If anyone had suggested a month before that she might seriously be about to take up a game she’d hardly heard of, she would have laughed in their faces. But it was strange how quickly things c...
He had had the same experience in the theatre. He would see a production of a play with a central performance of such power that he thought it must be definitive. Then, years later, with another actor in the rôle, he would see the play again and find the new interpretation, though totally differe...