It took me a few chapters to get into this one...there weren't a lot of characters in the early part of the book. But things picked up for me to the point that it was hard to put the book down. The characters were well-drawn, and I appreciated all of Thea's musings...it gave the book lots of depth. I'm excited because there are lots of books in the series, and Tope has written two (or two and a half) other series, each series set in a different region of England. ( )

Thea Osborne has recently been widowed and is looking for a change in her life. She takes a position as a house sitter in the Cotswolds village of Duntisbourne Abbots. When a body is found in her backyard, will Thea get the restful holiday she craves?

The Cotswold Killing was a book I really looked forward to, but I found it to be lacking something. I didn’t feel a connection to Thea, the main character, and didn’t particularly like her. The settings were hard to picture in my mind as I read the book because they weren’t well described. I did like the mystery storyline, which kept me guessing until the end. The premise of the book (house sitter solving crimes) should have been great but it fell flat. ( )

I liked this book. It is nice to read a British crime book for a change. Not brutal or very explicit. In Thea it has an unusual main character, that is just right for the atmosphere and the plot of the book.
I may even read another one from the series if I can lay hands on it. ( )

I looked forward to reading this book because the setting sounded interesting. The setting was interesting but the story wasn't. Our lonely depressed heroine Thea meets a man five minutes after she begins to settle down in the house she is house sitting. He is dead before morning and after rehashing this meeting repeatedly in her mind over the next one hundred fifty pages Thea begins to try and find out what it going aon in the village. All the reader gets in the next two hundred pages is that there is something sinister hovering around.

My advice is to read up until the murder then skip 300 pages and read the interesting denouement. Hopefully Thea gets better at her job because at least in this house she was either lazy, disinterested or distracted most of the time. ( )

Rather fun almost cosy little mystery. Not exactly belivable, but nothing particularly intrudes to shake the necessary suspension of scepticsm.

Thea - a widow of a year and just about coping with life - and her dog, take a job housesitting for a couple departing for a couple of weeks cruise. The tasks don't seem too onerous, untilt he owner turns up with a bulletpoint list. The sheep need regular counting, the dogs precise feeding, the dlowers watering and dusting. Thea manages to keep herself busy, but there are little other distractions in the small Cotswald village. However a body turns up in the pond on 'her' garden. Although not really any of her business she can't help but feel slightly responsible, and so uses it as an excuse to get to know the neighbours and find out what local politics had been going on. It was the 2nd death in recent months and deemed unlikely to be just coincidence or passing outsiders.

Enjoyable, Thea is somewhat difficult to empathise with unless you've recently suffered a loss yourself, but comes across as very belivable, the clues ot the puzzle were well placed, and although all the other characters are somewhat thin bit parts, they interact well with Thea.

Worth seeking out hte rest of the series. ( )