Customer Reviews

Death on the Downs

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It would be a mistake to read this book without first reading The Body on the Beach in which amateur detectives and neighbors Carole Seddon and Jude (no last name) meet one another. If opposites attract, these two fiftyish women make that point. Carole is a retired Home Office bureaucrat who likes things tidy and prefers her distance from people. Jude is friendly, messy, and plunges right in. That contrast was well established in The Body on the Beach. In Death on The Downs, the two characters begin to develop other facets. But if you haven't read the first book, you'll miss the relevance of much of that character development.

Carole Seddon once again stumbles on evidence of foul play when she uncovers a human skeleton while seeking shelter from the rain in an old barn. The local police are very sympathetic and even offer her counseling. Carole learns that there's been a young woman missing for four months. Could that be the victim? When Carole shares her experiences and theory with Jude, Jude is floored. She knows the missing woman!

Carole begins to exploit her developing social skills to find out more about what's going on in Weldisham, where she found the bones. Jude uses her alternative therapy contacts (and a little blackmail) to check out other lines of inquiry.

Carole knows she's on the right track when she begins to receive threats. Before the story is over, she'll pay a high price for her curiosity.

Readers who enjoyed The Body on the Beach will find Death on the Downs to be an easier book to read, with more interesting action.

This series is well worth reading and I hope you enjoy it!

I first read Brett's Charles Paris mysteries and enjoyed them, but in the Fethering series (four so far), he has outdone himself. I've bought and lent these books for and to several friends. Good stuff.

I think "glib" is the word I would use to describe this book. Not that it's poorly written, it just seems rather formulaic. Simon Brett writes for TV and I think that shows in Death/Downs. The characters are well-delineated, and he manages to sustain a sense of mystery, but somehow the plot failed to come to life. Actually, the villain isn't very scary. If you like "cozy mysteries", you might like this more than I did. Not a bad book, but not a great one either.

It's been a few years since I last read a Simon Brett mystery. The cynicism surprised me.

There are virtually no happy marriages in this book. Carole's husband left her, one woman with an overbearing husband uses tranquilizers, another wife drinks, one couple is uncommunicative and then they part, and the "doctor" is a serial philanderer. Jude is not married but has an unpleasant relationship with her paramour, which we are thankfully spared the details. Parent/child relationships don't fare much better.

And speaking of drinking ... that's practically all these characters do, besides intimidate, murder and commit mayhem and masochism. They are constantly drinking, not just at the pub but opening the second bottle of wine, etc.

New Age therapies are repeatedly defended- no matter how bizarre. At the end, we are treated to a discourse on the emptiness of traditional religion by the killer.

The writing is adept, the content leaves something to be desired. Come to think of it, Simon Brett seems more jaded than cynical. Perhaps he thinks he's post-modern. Maybe he writes because his New Age healer prescribes it.

DEATH ON THE DOWNS by Simon Brett finds Carole and Jude in the thick of a mystery. Carole take refuge from a storm in an old barn and stumbles over bags of human bones. The local gossip mill says the bones are those of Tamsin Lutteridge.

Carole tells the police that the missing girl had been seeing Jude for help dealing with a sleep syndrome.

Jude takes matters into her own hands and discovers Tamsin is alive and well but hiding from her father.

Now the due have two mysteries to unravel. Why is Tamsin hiding? and Whose bones were in the bags?

A fun, read with out the punch of the first in the series.

Nash Black, author of SINS OF THE FATHERS.