Showing results by narrator "Simon Brett" in All Categories

Carole Seddon hates Christmas - it all seems rather a waste of time. So when her best friend, Jude, drags her along to go shopping at a local store called Gallimaufry, she can feel her inner Scrooge knocking. Then Gallimaufry is burnt down, and a body is discovered. It seems like a tragic accident, but it’s not natural causes when a gun is involved. With a host of suspicious characters - the infamous womanizer Ricky Le Bonnier; Piers Duncton, an unfunny comedy writer; and Anna Carter, the lonely dog walker - the lady detectives know they have their work cut out for them.

It wasn't the rain that upset Carole Seddon during her walk on the West Sussex Downs. It wasn't the dilapidated barn in which she was forced to seek shelter. No, what upset her most was the human skeleton she discovered there.... So begins the second investigation for straitlaced Carole and her more laid-back neighbour Jude. This time their enquiries take them away from Fethering to the small download hamlet of Weldsham, where gossips quickly identify the corpse as Tamsin Lutteridge, a young woman who had disappeared from the village months before....

Although she hadn't known Leonard Mallett well, Carole Seddon feels duty bound to attend her fellow committee member's funeral. As she suspected, the sermon is very predictable - not unlike Leonard himself. What she couldn't have predicted was that the deceased's daughter would use the occasion to publicly accuse her stepmother of murder. Did Heather Mallett really kill her husband? Deciding to get to the heart of the matter, Carole's neighbour Jude joins the new community choir - and discovers that amidst the clashing egos and petty resentments lurk some decidedly false notes.

The Elizabethan house of Bracketts is about to be turned into a museum. It had once been the home of the celebrated poet Esmund Chadleigh and is to become a shrine to his life and poetry - but the transition is far from smooth. Carole Seddon had been reluctant to join the Bracketts Board, and now she realises that she should have listened to her instinct. The simmering tension between the board members is about to boil over. A human skeleton is discovered in the kitchen garden, and before too long there is a second body, not yet cold.

An idle conversation on the merits of the glorious game with an old Etonian chum is just the excuse Blotto needs to put himself forward for a cricket tour to foreign climes...and so begins the next adventure for our intrepid duo, where the action takes them to India where, as everyone knows, the finest cricket players hail from - as well as the world's most skilled jewel thieves.

Jude has never been averse to a bit of a flutter; her friend Carole, on the other hand, thinks that the local betting shop is a den of iniquity. But when Jude stumbles upon the body of a Polish immigrant, Tadeusz Jankowski, the race is on to find his killer. The odds aren’t looking good. No one seems to know anything about the mysterious Tadeusz - even his sister can’t shed any light on what he was doing in Fethering.

Having decided to redecorate Woodside Cottage, Jude has engaged the services of local man Pete, who has painted and decorated the homes of Fethering residents for many years. Pete is currently working on Footscrow House, a large Victorian building being converted into holiday flats. Whilst at 'Fiasco House', Jude and Pete make a surprising discovery behind a wall panel: a woman's handbag! The casual discovery becomes serious when the police identify the handbag's owner as Anita Garner, a young woman who vanished in suspicious circumstances 20 years earlier.

Ellen Curtis runs her own business helping people who are running out of space. As a declutterer, she is used to encountering all sorts of weird and wonderful objects in the course of her work. What she has never before encountered is a dead body. When Ellen stumbles across the body of a young woman in an over-cluttered flat, suspicion immediately falls on the deceased homeowner's son. No doubt Nate Ogden is guilty of many things - but is he really the killer? Discovering a link between the victim and her own past, Ellen sets out to uncover the truth.

Charles Paris is on his way up again, career-wise. No longer ‘resting’ or playing a corpse in a cupboard, he finds himself doubling almost every role in a provincial production of the play dreaded by superstitious theatrefolk: Macbeth.

When Alexandra Richards approaches professional declutterer Ellen Curtis to ask her to help sort out her mother's chaotic flat, Ellen gets the impression Alexandra doesn't like her mother very much. But when Ingrid Richards' body is discovered in her burned-out home, Alexandra's exasperated words don't seem such a joke. Due to the hazardous state of the victim's over-cluttered residence, the police are inclined to dismiss her death as an unfortunate accident. Ellen's not so sure.

Declutterer Ellen Curtis has been working to bring order into the life of Cedric Waites, a recluse in his eighties who hasn't left his house or let anyone inside it since his wife died. On one of her regular visits, Ellen finds the old man dead. Sad but, given his age, perhaps not unexpected. Until the police raise the suspicion that Cedric might have been poisoned! The cause seems be something he ate, and as Ellen cleared away the old man's food containers, she is under suspicion. As is Dodge, who works for Ellen and has unhelpfully done a runner.

As the First world War rapidly approaches, we arrive in a sleepy south coast town where Max Carrados, the celebrated blind detective, is soon investigating the sudden death of the local museum curator. All is not as it seems, as our blind hero finds himself on the cliff top in a duel to the death with the ruthless German spymaster who is the one who knows The Secret of Headlam Height.

When widow Mrs Pargeter has her morning coffee, her intention is to admire her beautiful garden in peace and quiet. Little does she expect one of the patio's paving slabs to crack in two, revealing a human skull with a neat hole in the middle of its forehead! Mrs Pargeter decides to investigate. And who better to assist than her late husband's 'business associates', private investigator Truffler Mason and chauffeur Gary?

Charles Paris is in clover. He has been contracted for three whole months to play brainless bobby Sergeant Clump, foil to the charismatic amateur sleuth, Stanislas Braid, in a TV series of that name. Recourse to the whiskey bottle is still needed, however, to get him through a day’s filming - one made all the more arduous by the pompous posturings of the show’s star, and the constant outraged interruptions of the ancient author whose detective novels are being adapted. Indeed, there is plenty of friction about.

A rising young stage comedian, who is about to receive his profession's award as ‘Most Promising Newcomer’, dies sensationally on stage at the start of his act; as he picks up the mike, he is electrocuted. Faulty wiring seems to be the cause; no one person is to blame; a verdict of death by misadventure is returned at the inquest.

Christopher Milton is one of TV’s brightest stars and the natural choice to play the lead in Lumpkin!, the musical version of She Stoops to Conquer. His is a ruthless, egomaniacal talent, guaranteed to turn his co-cast’s rehearsals into nail-biting hell. Charles Paris suspects him of harbouring at least one dark secret from years past. And then the ‘accidents’ begin. Soon it is plain that someone will stop at nothing in order to sabotage the show for their own ends.

Charles Paris is, as ever, waiting for a phone call from his agent, and is driven to painting and decorating to make ends meet. A rare evening out at a high-profile restaurant among stars of stage and screen promises a break in the depressing routine. But when the restaurant’s handsome, temperamental chef is brutally murdered, Charles finds himself drawn into the ensuing investigation. At first it seems an open and shut case: the chef’s

Charles Paris’ acting career plumbs new depths when he takes the part of a possible murder victim in ‘Public Enemies’, a true-crime television series. Finding himself in a bizarre world somewhere between police procedure and showbiz, Charles is inexorably drawn into the investigation... especially after the dismembered limbs start turning up. The viewers of ‘Public Enemies’ get caught up in the macabre jigsaw puzzle of death; it is ghastly, of course, but it does make good television.

When Andrea Gower’s body is discovered in an editing suite, with gashes in her wrists and two razor blades nearby, the cause of death seems obvious, with the words she spoke only hours before taking on a completely different meaning... Working as a radio actor for the BBC was all new to Charles Paris: a new kind of work, a new jargon, and a lot of new faces - some of them quite pretty.

After a long period of "resting", life is looking up for Charles Paris, who has been cast as the Ghost of Hamlet's Father and First Gravedigger in a new production of Hamlet. Ophelia is played by Katrina Selsey, who won the role through a television talent show. Hamlet himself is also played by a reality TV contestant, Jared Root - and the two young stars have rather different views than the more experienced members of the cast. But when the company reach the first staging post of their tour, matters get more serious, with one member of the company seriously injured in what appears to be an accident, and another dead....