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Library | Call Number | Status |
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Searching... Stillwater Public Library | MYSTERY BRE | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
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....
Author Notes
Simon Brett was born in Worcester Park, Surrey on October 28, 1945. He attended Dulwich College and then Wadham College, Oxford, where he studied English. Between 1967 and 1977, he was a producer with BBC Radio. He also spent a couple of years working for Thames Television.
In 1975, he published his first 'Charles Paris' novel. By 1979, Brett had become a full-time writer. He has written and edited children's books, humorous novels and several anthologies. In 1986, he introduced another sleuth: Mrs Pargeter.
As well as the Charles Paris and Mrs. Pargeter detective series, he is also the author of the radio and television series After Henry, the radio series No Commitments and the bestselling How to be a Little Sod . His novel A Shock to the System was filmed starring Michael Caine.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
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. (Aug. 5) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
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
Kirkus Review
Fethering village neighbors Carole Seddon and Jude Nichol (The Torso in the Town, 2002, etc.) poke at West Sussex secrets past and present with a drollness and an edge Miss Marple never dreamed of. Like everybody else in England, Carole once memorized the late poet Esmond Chadleigh's "Threnody for the Lost," written to commemorate his brother's heroic demise in Flanders. Now that she's been named to the Board of Trustees of Bracketts, Chadleigh's home, she's bored by the Board's squabbles (the current director and her predecessor are fighting over control; everyone is hounding Esmond's son to finish his long-overdue biography of the great man; a pushy rival biographer from America is insisting she have access to Esmond's papers) and jealous that Jude, with nary a word of explanation, has taken sickly academic Laurence Hawker into her home. But Carole perks up when a long-dead body is disinterred from the town's gardens. Alas, the corpse's identity is not disinterred with him. Before it's revealed, a fresh death will follow, and poor Carole and that pushy biographer will be trapped in a priest's hole that houses a vital cache of letters to Esmond's father. This fourth in a series could have used a little tweaking, but Brett provides a wry dissection of fundraising efforts, infighting among the nonprofit set, writing styles between the wars, and friends who don't confide in each other. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Home Office retiree Carole Seddon and her unconventional neighbor, Jude (Death on the Downs), become involved in another murder case when a skeleton is found on the grounds of Bracketts House, once home of a noted author. Unfortunately, any hint of scandal could mean the end of promised new funds for the impoverished museum. Another noteworthy series addition from the prolific author. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
