From Publishers Weekly
Carole Seddon, newest of veteran Brett's three series sleuths (actor Charlie Paris and widow Emily Pargeter are the others) gets a second turn following her debut in The Body on the Beach. Seddon, an early Home Office retiree, prides herself on her sensible approach to life a snug place in Fethering, a routine that involves mental exercises like the Times crossword puzzles and long walks along beaches or out on the Downs. On a walk on the South Downs near Weldisham (a village that "looked from the outside as though it hadn't changed much since the days when Agatha Christie might have set a murder there"), a driving rain forces Carole to seek shelter in an abandoned barn, where she discovers a bag of human bones. The local police are informed, and rumors spread to the effect that the bones might have belonged to a missing young woman named Tamsin. Soon Carole and her somewhat mysterious and exotic friend Jude are busily involved in sussing out information on their own partly for adventure, and partly because Tamsin had once turned to Jude for help. Carole's lack of self-confidence, really a lack of self-awareness, is meant to be endearing, but becomes irksome at times. All in all, Brett's more than competent plotting, a cast of characters that play against type to keep things sufficiently interesting and his take on village gentrification combine for fine entertainment. The author's core fans and those nostalgic for the traditional English cozy will snap this up.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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*Starred Review* The second installment of Brett's new Fethering series returns to the village of Fethering on the South Downs of West Sussex and the semirepressed, resolutely independent Carole Seddon, a woman forced into a life alone by divorce and an involuntary early retirement from the Home Office at age 50. In the first Fethering mystery,
The Body on the Beach [BKL Jl 00], a horrific discovery while out for a walk catapulted Seddon into sleuthing. This time another walk has Seddon seeking shelter in a derelict barn during a downpour; she stumbles over a fertilizer bag from which protrudes the ball-joint of a human femur. Body in place, sleuth with time to detect, and Brett is off again on a marvelous send-up of contemporary British society (pub decor, town planning based on greed, and class pretensions are some of his targets), mixed with the kind of writing that makes you want both to savor the prose slowly and to turn the page quickly to find out what twist lies ahead. In addition, Seddon is a fascinating psychological study who gains confidence from one novel to the next; the back-up characters are sometimes uproarious; and the portrayal of evil in an idyllic English village is thoroughbred British cozy.
Connie FletcherCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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