From AudioFile
Carole Seddon "parked the Renault on the outskirts of Weldisham, a village in the foothills of the South Downs that looked from the outside as though it hadn't changed much since the days when Agatha Christie might have set a murder there." Since Christie has at last consummated her flirtation with death, Simon Brett is the one who must produce the human skeleton, and get this story going. Brett has a beautiful, deep voice, with just a dash of plum. There follows a classic English mystery. Who's good? Who's wicked? Carole trusts her friend Jude, or does she? The puzzle challenges the mind. The neat prose and precise reading gratify the ear. B.H.C. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
Death on the Downs FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Exploring the South Downs of the well-to-do town of Weldisham, Carole Seddon is caught in a sudden rainstorm. She finds refuge in an old barn - but relief turns to revulsion when she discovers the bones of a human skeleton packed inside two bags." "After Carole informs the police, it isn't long before local gossip spreads. People are saying the remains are those of a missing girl named Tamsin Lutteridge, who was suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome and seeing several practitioners of alternative medicine - including Carole's friend Jude - to heal herself. Eager to learn if Tamsin really is dead, Jude begins her own investigation, which leads her to Sandalls Manor - where Tamsin is very much alive, and keeping close company with a very charismatic New Age healer." Now Jude and Carole have two mysteries to unravel. Why is Tamsin deliberately hiding from her father? And if the skeleton wasn't hers...whose was it?
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Carole Seddon, newest of veteran Brett's three series sleuths (actor Charlie Paris and widow Emily Pargeter are the others) gets a second turn following her debut in The Body on the Beach. Seddon, an early Home Office retiree, prides herself on her sensible approach to life a snug place in Fethering, a routine that involves mental exercises like the Times crossword puzzles and long walks along beaches or out on the Downs. On a walk on the South Downs near Weldisham (a village that "looked from the outside as though it hadn't changed much since the days when Agatha Christie might have set a murder there"), a driving rain forces Carole to seek shelter in an abandoned barn, where she discovers a bag of human bones. The local police are informed, and rumors spread to the effect that the bones might have belonged to a missing young woman named Tamsin. Soon Carole and her somewhat mysterious and exotic friend Jude are busily involved in sussing out information on their own partly for adventure, and partly because Tamsin had once turned to Jude for help. Carole's lack of self-confidence, really a lack of self-awareness, is meant to be endearing, but becomes irksome at times. All in all, Brett's more than competent plotting, a cast of characters that play against type to keep things sufficiently interesting and his take on village gentrification combine for fine entertainment. The author's core fans and those nostalgic for the traditional English cozy will snap this up. (Aug. 7) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Weldisham, a rural village recently tarted up by London nabobs longing for a place to weekend in the country with all the mod cons, is in for a bit of a shock when Carole Seddon, from the neighboring village of Fethering, takes a walk on the Downs, seeks shelter in a derelict barn during a storm, and discovers two bags full of cleanly picked bones. Whose? The regulars at the Hare and Hounds suggest they might be those of Detective Sergeant Lennie Baylis's mum, who walked out on her abusive husband years back. Or of Graham Forbes's first wife, who left with him for a posting in Kuala Lumpur, where she supposedly ran off with a university professor. Or of young Tamsin Lutteridge, who despite extreme inertia from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, has vanished. Soon enough, Carole's chum and amateur-sleuthing companion Jude finds Tamsin, leaving Carole to fend off an unwanted suitor, offend prizewinning former char Pauline and her menacing son Brian, and discover yet another dilapidated barn that acted as a repository for those old bones. Gossip, innuendo, quaffs at the pub, arson, another death, and a last-chapter cargo of drugs, thugs from the south, and three Weldisham ne'er-do-wells out to conquer the town-all come into play before Carole contemplates life beside a publican and Jude decides Ireland might just be her cuppa. Occasionally witty, but Brett's send-up of the congenial village mystery needs more companionable protagonists than self-effacing Carole and cryptic Jude ("The Body on the Beach", 2000).
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