The Killing in the Café

January 25, 2016
Early in British author Brett’s witty 17th mystery featuring Jude Nichol and Carole Seddon (after 2014’s The Tomb in Turkey), the reader learns that Carole is secretly addicted to a TV show featuring nuns and midwives, so she settles down “for an evening of prayer and placentas.” On a more serious note, at Polly’s Cake Shop, a popular eatery in the Sussex town of Fethering, a waitress, who’s also a client of Jude’s healing services, finds a body in the storeroom, but thinks she’s hallucinating. A few weeks later, Jude and Carole witness a body pulled from the sea. Meanwhile, Polly’s owner wants to sell out, and a group of residents, led by the delightfully blimpish Commodore Quintus Braithwaite, want to take it over with a volunteer crew. And the unemotional, uptight Carole goes bonkers over her new granddaughter. As mayhem ensues, Jude and Carole have few clues to go on. Only the low-key ending disappoints.

February 1, 2016
This is a rare misfire for Brett, who was awarded the Diamond Dagger by the UK-based Crime Writers' Association in 2014 for lifetime achievements in crime fictionmore than 90 novels, most of them mysteries, including the Charles Paris, Mrs. Pargeter, Blotto and Twinks, and Fethering series, of which this is the latest, surprisingly lackluster entry. The cozy setting, that of the tiny seaside village of Fethering, is intact, enhanced by its two part-time amateur detectives, neighbors and somewhat prickly friends Carole, a retired Home Office bureaucrat, and Jude, a healer. A body is found (cozily enough, in a tea shop), which then disappears from said premises to turn up later on the beach. Before the body appears, the tea shop, a village favorite, is the center of local dismay over the plans to turn it into a community-center tea shop, or worse. The problem is that Brett's portrayal of the civic squabble convinces us that committee work is boring by actually boring us with far too much reporting on the interminable meetings. Still, the author's fans will be willing to persevere for those occasional glimpses of Brettian wit.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)