Simon Brett (1) (1945–)

Jude is reluctantly drawn into a community group dedicated to preserving Polly’s Cake Shop, a local cafe whose owner is selling up. Some Fethering villagers are worried that it will be replaced by a generic multinational like Starbucks and they therefore set up a committee to take over the space and repurpose it into a community cafe. Jude is not interested in this, but she has a client who works at the cafe and is in a fragile state - partially because she thinks she has seen a murdered show more man in the cafe’s supply closet. Unfortunately she has had episodes of hallucinations associated with depression in the past, so she isn’t sure that what she saw was real - and the corpse has disappeared…. Although I continue to enjoy the relationships between the characters in these books, in particular of course between Jude and Carole, this one stands out more for its portrayal of small-town life, or at least the kind of small town where interlopers often try to take over the social concerns of the inhabitants and stamp their own identity on the town. I’ve never lived in such a place, but the descriptions here ring true (and are often very funny), and I enjoyed seeing how the more steady members of the community overcome these obstacles; also the mystery is entertaining in itself. Recommended! show less

I adored The Clutter Corpse, Simon Brett’s debut novel in a new series that introduced us to widow Ellen Curtis, an inquisitive declutter expert in Chichester, England. In this second novel, a famous television war correspondent goes up in flames, but Ellen suspects it’s not an accident. As always with Brett, plenty of twists and turns, but in this series, he also provides an empathetic look at the dangers of clinical depression. I devoured this book!

Simon Brett produces some wonderful, wonderful cozy mystery series, one featuring dipsomaniacal actor Charles Paris and another featuring the unlikely friends Carole and Jude. However, my favorite has and always will be the series featuring Melita Pargeter, a widow of a beloved man whose business was not exactly legal. Mr Pargeter left his wife well provided, but his greatest gift was a little black book with all of his old associates — all of whom are grateful and eager to assist the show more generous widow.

How much I’d missed Mrs Pargeter! Brett released his sixth Mrs Pargeter novel in 1998, but years went by without another. What a disappointment! I thought I’d never again have the pleasure of reading any more of her exploits. But, luckily, Brett has had second thoughts and finally released the seventh in this delightful series. In it, Mrs Pargeter attends a funeral and realizes that someone desperately wants to disguise the early history of the deceased, one of Mr Pargeter’s earliest associates. So what is so dangerous about Sir Normington Winthrop’s origins that it must be kept hidden under any circumstances? And who is it that feels so threatened about that information?

How wonderful to be reunited with Mrs Pargeter and her friends, especially the now-legit private detective Truffler Mason. Please, please, Simon Brett, keep writing these fabulous mysteries! show less

Brett, Simon. Mrs., Presumed Dead. 1988. Mrs. Pargeter No. 2. Thorndike Press, 1990.
Mrs. Pargeter is the widow of a successful man whose business trips would not all have been approved by the local constabulary. He willed her a pistol, a sword cane, and a set of burglar’s tools. He also bequeathed to her an address book filled with experts of various criminal skills. She herself never participated in her husband’s adventures, but all his accomplices promised to look after her. So, when show more she sets out to solve a murder in a stuffy, racist middle-class neighborhood, she knows just who to call to get the research help she needs. Brett is a master of the form and is a writer who can make the objects of satire suffer bleeding wounds before they know they have been cut. 4 stars. show less