Murder in the Museum (Fethering Mysteries) [Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Simon Brett (Author), Geoffrey Howard (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2004 | Series: Fethering Mysteries

When a human skeleton is found buried on the grounds of the famed Bracketts House--the historic home of the author Esmond Chadleigh--Carole Seddon and Jude must determine whether the beloved writer's sword was mightier than his pen...and whether the snobbish, squabbling trustees of Bracketts House have something to hide....

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Brett's fourth chatty, genteel Fethering mystery (after 2002's The Torso in the Town), Carole Seddon finds herself a member of the Bracketts Trust, which is responsible for the upkeep of Bracketts, former home of West Sussex litterateur Esmond Chadleigh. Tension arises between the Trust's new director, Gina Locke, who represents the new world of "management structures," and former trustee Sheila Cartwright, who's from the old school of local volunteers. While they wrangle over Bracketts's future, a skeleton turns up in the garden. Though it's obviously been there a long time, Sheila does her best to keep this disturbing find quiet. When a female American academic shows up to research a new biography of Chadleigh, she's stonewalled by the Trust's dawdling biographer-elect and grandson of the author, Graham Chadleigh-Bewes. Clearly something more than mere footnotes is being concealed. Eager to ferret out the truth, the uptight Carole is unable to rely on her usual partner-in-detection, the liberated Jude Nichols, since Jude is looking after a dying former lover. At times, subtle character interaction, at which Brett excels, threatens to take over the novel, but the mystery gathers steam after another, fresher body appears. Even Jude and lover have a part to play in its resolution, and Brett provides a shocking revelation or two at the end to bring a proper ending to a proper story.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

The kitchen garden of a stately home in the Sussex village of Fethering is the final resting place for two bodies: one buried there during World War I and newly discovered; the other landing in the ground 90 years later, the result of a single gunshot. Brett delivers a deft mixture of history-mystery and contemporary thriller in this latest installment in his Fethering series starring the prickly, fiftysomething amateur sleuth, Carole Sedden, who is on site for the discovery of both bodies. Carole has been asked to serve on the board of trustees for a stately home once inhabited by one of the most famous Catholic poets of the Great War. Brett, who sends up backstage backbiting in his Charles Paris theatrical mysteries, applies the same caustic wit to the desperate gamesmanship of board meetings and village politics. The appearance of an American professor who wants to write a biography of the Catholic poet throws the board into a satisfyingly snide uproar. The contemporary murder is a feat of planning, a sort of mirror image of the locked-room puzzle in which the killing takes place in the open air, with Sedden walking right next to the victim. Another marvelous mix of social satire and traditional cozy. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks; Unabridged edition (April 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786186844
• ISBN-13: 978-0786186846
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,491,978 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars "Now Museum, Now You Don't", December 6, 2008

By 

J. S. Palmer "Hostias" (New Jersey, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Murder in the Museum (Fethering Mysteries) (Audio CD)

Your enjoyment of the Fethering Series will depend more upon your like or dislike of the two protagonists than on the story lines themselves, most of which are modestly serviceable. Solid characterization can forgive a multitude of plot sins, but sadly there is little that is redeeming in either instance.

Protagonist #1: Mrs. Carole Seddon is priggish and prudish, but polite; she is a retired civil servant with "predictable" middle class mores. Brett would like us to believe that Carole Seddon is like *all* middle class people: uptight, humorless and asexual. As a character, Carole Seddon is certainly not warm and fuzzy, but why does Brett feel the need to demean, albeit subtly, her "middle class" attitudes of discretion, circumspection and civility? In doing so, Carole Seddon's character is a pastiche of flimsy stereotypes conjured up from the battle lines of class warfare, and as such, it soon tires the insightful reader.

Protagonist #2: Jude. That's right, "Jude" apparently has no surname, middle name nor any honorific. Like "Madonna" and "Lassie," Jude is known by a one word moniker, and I personally found this pretentious contrivance rather annoying. In direct contrast to Carole, her "middle class" counterpart, Jude is sensitive, unconventional, direct to the verge of rudeness, and a dilettante of alternative therapies. She understands -- and even helps heal -- psychotic, antisocial offenders and other such *misunderstood* folk. Jude consumes vast quantities of wine, and freely offers her ample, middle-aged body to the men of her choosing. In short, She's a cross between Mother Earth and Dr. Phil, with a bit of Linda Lovelace thrown in for good measure.

"The Hanging in the Hotel" was the first Fethering book I listened to, and I thought that it was good enough to warrant trying another. However as "Murder in the Museum" came to a close, I found my sympathy for Carole and her propriety waxing, while my tolerance for Jude and her unconventional *style* waning. Quite frankly, Jude's fanciful notions and personal peccadilloes are just too tedious and irksome, and her inane psychobabble reveals that she is either naive, stupid or just plain mad.

However, there is one plot element with which I would like to take exceptional issue, and that's Brett's depictions of Roman Catholics, all of whom seem like candidates for the nearest lunatic asylum. One's opinions about Roman Catholicism aside -- and Brett doesn't disguise his as no Catholic character in his book is portrayed with any sympathy, morals or brains -- if one is going to comment on Church theology, one should at least get it right. And I don't know about you, but I don't need an old, dried-up octogenarian cackling about "Humanae Vitae" in the murder mystery I'm reading, unless it's set in the Vatican, and essential to the plot....and maybe not even then!

But as I said at the onset, it's up to the individual, and I, being a "middle class" person, found Mrs. Seddon a tolerable character: with a little more development, and a really juicy plot, she could sleuth these mysteries out herself rather handily. Meanwhile, Earth Goddess Jude needs to be relegated to list of ancillary characters, and then Brett might have a real series on his keyboard.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Where's Charles?, December 8, 2003

By 

S. Wheeler (San Jose, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Murder in the Museum (Fethering Mysteries) (Hardcover)

Boo! These Fethering mysteries are way below par. What makes Brett's other work so great is the wit and polish of writing and the great characterization. Neither quality is apparent in this series. The two main characters are shallow stereotypes of the middle-class civil servant and the free spirit who have somehow come together over an interminable glass of white wine. To compare these to a Miss Marple is ludicrous. This one is particularly inane...the deep, dark family secret, the weak nephew, the vicious do-gooder, the ambitious administrator, the self-important bureaucrat, the unprincipled American academic (by the way, Americans do not pronounce "God" as "Gard"), the escaped convict and even the handicapped child! Please. Can we have more Charles Paris? Less white wine and more Bell's??

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Elementary, My Dear Holmes, February 26, 2007

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 110,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Murder In The Museum (Paperback)

I would have thought that Murder in the Museum was even more contrived than it is if I hadn't known an American woman who sought to write an "authorized" biography of a prominent Englishwoman from the same period as the fictional Esmond Chadleigh. Clearly, Simon Brett must have run into one of those overly protective families during his life . . . and was inspired to write this ironic account of our "minor" figures get treated like royalty if they happen to be your relative.

In a place like South Stapley, you have to contrive to create murders because this is an area not known for its violent crime. But the contrivance in this story is too much. You'll see the creaky plot outlines stretching out in front of you as you ponder on the poor editing in the book. Clearly, this book was written under a tight deadline.

In this fourth outing of the Fethering mystery series, Carole Seddon is improbably on the board of trustees for Bracketts House, the home of minor poet, children's story author, and essayist Esmond Chadleigh. Carole finds she's made a mistake, but events intervene to keep her on the board before she can decently resign. The trustees are in a flap because the foundation is short of operating money, wants to build an addition, and an American scholar has expressed interest in writing what may be a somewhat irreverent biography of the departed author. Matters become more complex when a human skull (with an extra hole) is unexpectedly excavated in the garden. In addition, the new director and the former director are battling it out for power.

Jude, in the meantime, has received an old lover, Laurence Hawker, who smokes and drinks as much as ever. Carole isn't thrilled by this "intrusion" on her increasingly friendly relationship with Jude.

Even more improbably, Carole is selected to be the go-between handling the discussions with the American professor, Marla Teischbaum, on the theory that Carole knows so little that she cannot give anything away. Feeling torn between current director, Gina Locke, and the former director, Sheila Cartwright, Carole is increasingly miffed that Jude seems too devoted to her friend, Laurance.

The new characters in the book all come across as very thinly drawn. You'll barely remember the differences in many of them, and you won't care that you don't.

If you have problems figuring what the skull is all about and the other crime in the book, you won't have been paying attention. Solving this book's "mysteries" would have been easy for even Dr. Watson. "Elementary, my dear Holmes."

What redeems this book are two features:

1. Jude is compelled to give a last name (one that I won't reveal).

2. The book's conclusion is full of classic Simon Brett ironies.