The Torso in the Town

by Simon Brett

Overview

'Few crime writers are so enchantingly gifted . . . as Simon Brett' Sunday Times 'Simon Brett writes stunning detective stories' JILLY COOPER 'King of the witty village mystery' Telegraph Grant and Kim Roxby had hoped that their first dinner party at Pelling House would make an impression with their new neighbours. And the next day it’s certainly the talk of the village in Fethering. For their guests – including the couple’s old friend Jude – had been enjoying a pleasant meal when they were rudely interrupted by a gruesome discovery. A human torso hidden in the cellar. Carole and Jude turn amateur sleuths once again. They begin to question the locals, but they can’t help wondering why a town notoriously distrustful of outsiders is proving so terribly amenable to their enquiries . . .

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781786897749
Publisher:	Canongate Books
Publication date:	06/06/2019
Series:	Fethering Village Mysteries , #3
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	266,277
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Simon Brett worked as a producer in radio and television before taking up writing full-time. He was awarded an OBE in the 2016 New Year’s Honours for services to Literature and also was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2014 he won the CWA’s prestigious Diamond Dagger for an outstanding body of work. The Torso in the Town is the third book in the series. simonbrett.com

Editorial Reviews

British veteran Brett demonstrates that his mordant wit has not lost its power to amuse in this third Fethering mystery (after 2001s Death on the Downs). Standoffish Carole Seddon is nursing her wounds over the failure of her love affair with local barkeep Ted, while her neighbor and partner in crime-solving, Jude, is invited to a dinner party in nearby Fedborough. When one of the Roxby children, 15-year-old Harry, finds part of a dead body in the cellar of Pelling House, which the lads family has recently moved into, Jude determines that investigating the crime is just the thing to get Carole back out of her shell. Her interest caught, Carole helps Jude delve further into the mysterious female torso in the town, as theyre calling it in Fedborough. Could the torso be the remnants of Virginia Hargreaves, once the wife of local character Roddy Hargreaves? She hasnt been seen in Fedborough in three years, which is how long ago the experts say the victim died. Carole and Jude push their noses further and further into the business of Fedborough to dig up any little secrets that could have a bearing on the crime. Brett uses their nosiness as a vehicle for a merry skewering of middle-class pretentiousness, while presenting a dandy whodunit. Readers who have been missing the authors Charles Paris and Mrs. Melita Pargeter will find much to amuse them in this delightful new series. (Aug. 6) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Fedborough, just a few kilometers down the road from Fethering, is a posh little town full of antique stores, gourmet food shops, and wealthy resettled Londoners like Kim and Grant Roxby, the new owners of Pelling House, where their rather tedious dinner party is interrupted by their teenage son Harry's discovery of a neatly dismembered woman's body in the cellar. Who was she, and who put her there? Fortunately for the coppers, who haven't a clue, one of the dinner guests is Fethering's nosiest amateur sleuth, that middle-aged bohemian Jude (Death on the Downs, 2001, etc.), who bustles right over to her glum chum Carole, despondent over her breakup with the local publican, and pries open all sorts of village secrets. Who was sleeping with whom? The busiest bed seems to have belonged to Virginia, the promiscuous wife of former Pelling House owner Roddy Hargreaves, who left him a few years back. Roddy is soon found floating in the muddy Fether, the victim of a drunken misstep or a second homicide. There'll be eavesdropping at the Coach and Horses, a walking tour of Fedborough, and some apprentice sleuthing by young Harry before Jude and Carole solve the Pelling House mystery and decide never to venture those few kilometers from Fethering again. Genial if not memorable, with a few swipes at villages accommodating the upscale tourist market and unsubstantiated sexual assumptions. Even so, Jude and Carole hardly rise to the level of Brett's marginal actor Charles Paris-or the sublime Mrs. P.

Kirkus Reviews