Death on the Downs
(Libby/OverDrive eAudiobook)

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 Fletcher

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. (Aug. 7) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

When Carole Seddon discovers two blue fertilizer bags containing the neatly stacked bones of a human body, she has no idea of the perils that await her. Carole, a timid, retired Home Office employee, is not comfortable with the kind of attention this discovery brings her. When her friend Jude returns, the two women decide to solve the mystery on their own. Brett (The Body on the Beach) has created another interesting cast of characters in his "Fethering Mysteries," including Carole, a prim woman who doesn't-or at least thinks she doesn't-care for change, and Jude, her neighbor, who is so secretive that no one even knows her last name. Jude is assertive and outgoing, the exact opposite of Carole, but they form an interesting team when detecting, and this won't be the first murder case they solve. Geoffrey Howard's narration sets the proper British tone. Sure to be popular with those who enjoy literary "cozy cottage" mysteries, this is highly recommended for all public libraries.-Theresa Connors, Arkansas Tech Univ., Russellville (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Weldisham, a rural village recently tarted up by London nabobs longing for a place to weekend in the country with all the mod cons, is in for a bit of a shock when Carole Seddon, from the neighboring village of Fethering, takes a walk on the Downs, seeks shelter in a derelict barn during a storm, and discovers two bags full of cleanly picked bones. Whose? The regulars at the Hare and Hounds suggest they might be those of Detective Sergeant Lennie Baylis's mum, who walked out on her abusive husband years back. Or of Graham Forbes's first wife, who left with him for a posting in Kuala Lumpur, where she supposedly ran off with a university professor. Or of young Tamsin Lutteridge, who despite extreme inertia from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, has vanished. Soon enough, Carole's chum and amateur-sleuthing companion Jude finds Tamsin, leaving Carole to fend off an unwanted suitor, offend prizewinning former char Pauline and her menacing son Brian, and discover yet another dilapidated barn that acted as a repository for those old bones. Gossip, innuendo, quaffs at the pub, arson, another death, and a last-chapter cargo of drugs, thugs from the south, and three Weldisham ne'er-do-wells out to conquer the town-all come into play before Carole contemplates life beside a publican and Jude decides Ireland might just be her cuppa. Occasionally witty, but Brett's send-up of the congenial village mystery needs more companionable protagonists than self-effacing Carole and cryptic Jude (The Body on the Beach, 2000).

When Carole Seddon discovers two blue fertilizer bags containing the neatly stacked bones of a human body, she has no idea of the perils that await her. Carole, a timid, retired Home Office employee, is not comfortable with the kind of attention this discovery brings her. When her friend Jude returns, the two women decide to solve the mystery on their own. Brett (The Body on the Beach) has created another interesting cast of characters in his "Fethering Mysteries," including Carole, a prim woman who doesn't-or at least thinks she doesn't-care for change, and Jude, her neighbor, who is so secretive that no one even knows her last name. Jude is assertive and outgoing, the exact opposite of Carole, but they form an interesting team when detecting, and this won't be the first murder case they solve. Geoffrey Howard's narration sets the proper British tone. Sure to be popular with those who enjoy literary "cozy cottage" mysteries, this is highly recommended for all public libraries.-Theresa Connors, Arkansas Tech Univ., Russellville Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.