The Killer in the Choir

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.

Starred review from July 1, 2019
Brett's Fethering mysteries are set in a picturesque, Agatha Christie-style coastal village in West Sussex, whose inhabitants often end up murdered. The sleuths are two women in their fifties, Carole Seddon, retired from the Home Office, and her friend and next-door neighbor, Jude (known only by her first name), who works as a New Age healer. This nineteenth in the series has all the elements of Golden Age village mysteries (dim-witted constables, sharp-witted amateur sleuths, secrets and tensions simmering beneath the villagers' highly polished surfaces). But Brett's latest is also darker than his previous mysteries, with the long shadows of domestic violence, sexual abuse, depression, and loneliness following main and minor characters. The action centers on the choirs for a funeral and a wedding, with a murder suspect at the funeral and a murder victim discovered after the wedding. The widow at the funeral for her much-older husband (who died after falling down some stairs) arouses suspicion because she's so, well, merry, given the circumstances. Jude and Carole, after the police have dismissed the death as accidental, set off on parallel probes, using their village contacts and a little choral undercover work to great advantage. This episode is graced by ingeniously drawn characters, deft timing of twists, and a to-die-for climax. A stunner.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

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.)