Death in the dressing room

Fans of British theatrical mysteries and comic cozies will find the latest Brett novel a delightful combination of the two. Brett, awarded the UK's Diamond Dagger in 2014 for sustained excellence in crime fiction, brings the heft of experience to his mysteries, especially in his Charles Paris series, as he's written plays and produced comedies and dramas for BBC Radio and TV. In this, the eleventh in the Fethering series, amateur sleuths Carole Seddon, a straitlaced Home Office retiree, and her friend Jude, a free-spirited alternative healer who keeps her last name--like much of her past--a secret, stumble into a mystery. Jude visits a friend after a performance at a repertory theater nearby and finds him dead in his dressing room, with a head wound from a prop. The theater manager covers up the actor's suspicious death, so Jude and Carole investigate on their own, finding ingenious ways to infiltrate the theater and interview its denizens. The play is a revival of an old TV sitcom, giving Brett free rein to work with both forms. It's fascinating to see Carole and Jude worm their way into the theater, learning about its operations and about massive egos and long-held rivalries. Suspense and comedy keep bubbling throughout. A feast.

Her friend Jude's trip to nearby Clincham to catch a play endsin yet another suspicious death for English retiree Carole Seddon. The play,House/Home, isn't up to much. It's a reprise of a television sitcom in which an older couple rented an outbuilding to a bunch of variously wacky students. The real drama is backstage, as Jude discovers when she pops into the dressing room of Drake Purslow, with whom she worked briefly when she was an actress, and finds him dead, bashed in the head by the trademark first-generation home computer his character, Mr. Whiffen, used on the show. Purslow's death could possibly have seemed accidental if it weren't for a bloody footprint indicating that someone had been on the scene before Jude--a footprint that's carelessly or deliberately wiped out by theater manager Fiona Crampton when she attempts in vain to take Purslow's pulse. Returning home, Jude enlists Carole, as usual, in her investigation. Despite Carole's introversion, she finds a way to gather information by volunteering to help digitize the Clincham Theatre's old records. Along the way, she learns that despite the untimely demises of two members of the original cast ofHouse/Home, not only have most of the current touring production collaborated on the TV show, but several of them also worked on a stage adaptation ofThe Woman in White years ago at the Clincham, an episode that holds the key to two mysterious deaths. A low-simmering puzzle spiced with theatrical gossip and an unusually well-hidden killer. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.