2014; fifteenth in Brett's Fethering Mysteries series (amateur
sleuthing in small-town Sussex). After a rehearsal for a village-hall
production of The Devil's Disciple, the lead is found strangled on
the "absolutely safe" gallows.
The previous book had real tennis as an obsession, and this time
it's the turn of amateur dramatics. As painted here, it's another
world full of small people trying to get away from the tragedies of
their conventional lives; the Smalting Amateur Dramatic and Operatic
Society (and yes, the inevitable "saddoes" is used repeatedly) is
stuffed with the failed and inadequate, from the widowed Queen Bee who
runs the community through controlling access to her weekly "drinkies
things" (though what benefit anyone might feel from attending them
remains a mystery) and always gets the lead role, to the inadequate
"engineer" who builds the sets, and our heroines Carole and Jude have
to dodge fast to avoid being hit by clashing egoes.
As last time, this is much more Jude's book than Carole's; Carole had
been moving along an obvious but enjoyable arc from prickly "proper"
person to someone a bit more relaxed and open to new experience, but
here she's rather more closed up again, having to be persuaded and
cozened and flattered into a role with SADOS even after the murder
has happened and she's desperate to investigate it. I get the feeling
that Brett has lost interest in her character progression and settled
into a comfortable rut, placing her as the butt of jokes rather than
as a co-protagonist. Even Jude doesn't seem to like her much any more.
It's possible to spot the villain by a simple narrative analysis of
the possible suspects, but there's very little diegetic evidence
pointing to that person, and the eventual motive didn't convince me:
it's not quite "a loony did it" but it definitely throws questions of
motivation out of the window. The ending is especially unsatisfactory.
There are some distinctly problematic moments, such as when Jude
extracts information about a hospital patient without any status with
which to do so, engages in (reiki-like) healing without that patient's
consent, and then pumps her for information.
Not a particularly good entry in the series, and I think that Brett
has lost the animating spark for these characters, perhaps through
unwillingness to let them grow and change. Followed by The Tomb in
Turkey.
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