A Cotswold Killing

First Line: The pain in Thea's finger was intermittent, but sharp.

Recently widowed Thea Osborne has decided to house-sit, and Brook View Farm outside the picture perfect village of Duntisbourne Abbots in the Cotswolds looks ideal. Thea's only worry is that spending three weeks there with the owner's persnickety pages of instructions and three dogs might prove a bit dull.

Her first night's sleep is interrupted by a piercing scream, but since it wasn't close to the house, no one's dogs seemed bothered by it, and it wasn't followed by anything else suspicious, Thea did nothing. Nothing, that is, until she discovers the body of a neighboring farmer at the bottom of one of Brook View's fields. As the investigation unfolds, Thea finds herself show more talking to neighbors and uncovering bits and pieces of enough secrets and tragedy that she forgets all about her worry of being bored.

I enjoyed this book much more than I thought I would. That makes it sound as though I expected to dislike it, which isn't true. The setting became very real for me with two sentences:

"Every roadway leading to the village centre was steep and twisting, with no clear vistas. Most of the houses escaped being overlooked by any of the others, producing a sense of solitude and secrecy that felt strange in the middle of a village."

If you're anything like me, that description is just the tiniest bit creepy. Who knows what goings-on and secrets can be found in a place with no clear line of sight and with none of the houses being overlooked? (I have to admit that the above description reminded me a bit of a drive through the Yorkshire Dales on one-lane roads, steep hills, and blind corners. What began as a white knuckle ride for me became enchanting due to one simple fact: in that part of England some of the politest drivers in the world are to be found.)

Besides the setting, I found that I really liked the main character, which is amazing because I'm normally very suspicious of anyone who's described as being beautiful. Yes, Thea is beautiful, but she's not obnoxious about it. She's not obsessed with clothing, shoes, makeup or hair styles. She occasionally uses her looks as a tool, having learned years ago that "it was amazing what a smile could do, accompanied by an open and innocent demeanour."

Thea's not obsessed by her appearance, she's not nervous about being alone in a strange place, and she shares what she knows with the police. As she gets to know various villagers, some are very forthcoming-- she won't be around for long, so it won't hurt to talk to her-- and some look at her with distrust. They've heard about Miss Marple, you see.

As I was enjoying my leisurely read in the Cotswolds, getting to know the village and its inhabitants, I actually found the answer to the mystery to be a total surprise because I'd forgotten all about searching for clues. I'm looking forward to reading other books in this series, although I do have one concern: if Thea stumbles into each mystery by house-sitting, won't she soon garner a reputation as The House Sitter of Doom? I think I'll enjoy finding out! show less

A Cotswold Killing is the first of a new-to-me series by Rebecca Tope, set in England's Cotswold Hills region, a land of small villages and farmland now frequently home to wealthy ex-urbanites who fancy a genteel taste of the country life. Our heroine, Thea Osbourne, was widowed a year ago when her husband was killed in a terrible automobile accident; having taken out life insurance policies as a light-hearted lark, she now finds herself well-off enough to not need to work. But staying at home is no good for her and, encouraged by her policeman brother-in-law James, she advertises as a house-sitter and is soon hired by a rich couple about to embark on a three-week cruise. Thea accepts the job and is handed a meticulous list of things to show more do, including the care and feeding of a small flock of Cotswold sheep and a pair of lazy labradors. Her expectations of a quiet, even dull, time are almost immediately shattered when during her first night as a house-sitter, a local farmer is murdered on the property just hours after he had introduced himself to her, and when she learns that the man's brother was also murdered on the same property not two months earlier, Thea finds herself making an attempt to solve the crime herself.... I quite enjoyed this novel, initially published in 2004; enough so that I've searched out the other six books in the series. Thea is an interesting character, definitely flawed but with no small amount of curiousity and charm, and the rural English setting is a delight to read about even when it's set in the Internet age. I find myself hoping that some of the characters in this book - Harry Richmond, an older man with a connection to the murdered brothers, for example - will turn up in other books in the series, but even if they don't Thea and her cocker spaniel Hepzibah provide good reading, especially as the autumn approaches. Recommended. show less

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.

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 show more 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. show less

Enjoyable stuff as always from Rebecca Tope. Commendable because it's in many ways got a typical 'cosy' mystery setup (newly widowed housesitter stumbles into murder investigation in pretty village) but managed to never make me scream 'no, don't go down the dark staircase to the cellar alone without a torch!' even though the central character did some things that were almost as bad as going down that rickety staircase a few times.

At times this book felt hard going and I sometimes became annoyed what seemed to be a welter of detail that slowed the action down.

Thea Osborne uses her husband's death as an excuse to embark on a new occupation of house-sitting. The three week job in a house in the village of Duntisbourne Abbot is her first, and it quickly becomes obvious that it is not going to be as simple as she imagines. Her employers have a detailed and comprehensive list of tasks. But not on the list is the murder of one of the locals in her back garden. And of course Thea is carrying her own share of emotional baggage.
As time goes on a suspicion grows that her police detective brother in law has somehow contrived that she got the job in the first place.

A show more COTSWOLD KILLING seemed to have an unnecessarily complicated plot. There are a lot of characters to sort out and a complex web of relationships to fathom. Some of the characters we meet only fleetingly, and can't be sure whether we need to remember them. Thea Osborne is an interesting character but her involvement in undertaking an investigation into her neighbours is not entirely logical. There were events such as the traffic accident which results in Thea's car being written off which raised the level of plot complexity with not much useful outcome. There were times too when the reader did not know what Thea had discovered - for example she researches local news items, sends an email off to her brother in law but doesn't tell us until pages later what it was she found.

All in all though, it is not a badly written novel. Nothing that perhaps a bit of judicious editing might not have cured. show less

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.