The Shooting in the Shop (A Fethering Mystery) - Hardcover

Simon Brett worked as a producer in radio and television before taking up writing full time. As well as the much-loved Fethering series, the Mrs Pargeter novels and the Charles Paris detective series, he is the author of the radio and television series After Henry, the radio series No Commitments and Smelling of Roses and the bestselling How to Be a Little Sod. His novel A Shock to the System was filmed, starring Michael Caine.

*Starred Review* Two middle-age women, one a dour divorcée, the other a promiscuous New Age flake, are neighbors in the coastal English village of Fethering; they become, improbably, friends and, even more improbably, sometime sleuths. Such was the orginal premise for Brett’s Fethering series. It sounds contrived, but with the talented Brett, the character clash and the amazingly high homicide rate for a tiny village come across as both brilliant and perfectly reasonable. The secret is in Brett’s range. He moves effortlessly from sharp, pitiless physical description (e.g., a fiftyish woman who looks like Marilyn Monroe gone to seed) to flashes of compassionate insight (one of the sleuths, Carole Seddon, fears becoming a lone woman huddled in a shelter at the beach). Brett always spikes his plots with acerbic social commentary—his depiction of a Christmas Eve drinks party is as comically merciless an examination of characters’ pretensions as any Restoration comedy. In the latest Fethering, Seddon’s much looser friend, identified only as Jude, drags Carole into celebrating Christmas, starting with searching for the perfect gift at a trendy village shop and attending Jude’s Christmas party, which the shop owner and her music-producer husband also attend. A few days later the shop burns to the ground, and the body of this couple’s stepdaughter is discovered within. Jude and Carole kick into investigative mode, and the plot kicks up, providing more secrets and greater danger for the intrepid pair. Intricate fun. --Connie Fletcher