Rebecca TopeCritiques

Crime

For me, this book was indeed an Ordeal, actually, a reading ordeal. The author created such a contrived plot by creating implausible behaviour on the part of the chief detective's investigating procedure. No detective would dream of taking a member of the public to an arrest scene and leave them in a semi-hidden police vehicle. A development to create the dénouement was so artificial and detracted from any credibility. This aspect of the tale underlined my impression of the ditzy, two-dimensional characters, interspersed with scenic descriptions that did nothing to contribute to the plot. My not having read book 1 was probably a blessing.½

Having really enjoyed book 1 of this series I was looking forward to an enjoyable read and, to begin with, it was such. It is obvious that the writer really knows her subject on a practical level and I found the details of farming life, with the tedious yet essential paperwork and recording of milk yields etc, interesting. And the murder of the herdsman almost under the noses of the farmer and the milk recorder set up the mystery to be solved.

The problem I found as the story went on was that a lot of ground was gone over repeatedly and eventually a bit boringly, yet the police investigation left promising areas completely unexamined. For example, the victim's participation and possible organising of badger baiting and other cruel pasttimes should at least have put his partner in such activities into the frame, yet although mentioned, this person was not even interviewed.

A lot of the story revolves around the relationship of Lilah, who was a main character of book 1, with the chief suspect, the farmer on whose premises the murder occurred. I found the sexual details a bit unnecessary especially the scene near the end where the particular turn they take seemed to resolve that relationship rather drastically in a way I found unconvincing. And it remained a mystery to me how the farmer was such a stud in the district especially since he came across as a rather creepy controlling character, particularly so in that scene. So by the end it balanced out at an OK 2 star read for me.

Number 15 in the Cotswolds cosy crime series which began as Thea Osborne's misadventures as a house sitter and has continued since she married Drew Slocombe, the amateur investigator and professional undertaker hero of another series, whereby his series merged with hers, logically as the Slocombes and Drew's two children have relocated to a house in the Cotswolds which Drew inherited from a client.

The story begins with the visit by a neighbour in the house opposite who wants Drew to tackle a couple who live up the road and are apparently disturbing things due to loud arguments. Drew declines, as he doesn't know them and doesn't want to get people's backs up, as his natural burials business, although now starting to take off, is still fairly vulnerable. Instead he encourages Thea to go along and she comes up with the pretence of wanting to start a local history society based around the area's involvement in the early 20th century Arts and Crafts movement.

She meets Hilary who is very enthusiastic about the idea, and her husband who perpetually shouts at the top of his voice and seems rather overbearing and rude. Another couple arrive for a bridge session along with a woman, Rachel Ottaway, and Hilary asks Thea to come back later that afternoon. When she does, she is confronted with a meltdown: the dog which Hilary was minding for her sister, who is dying in hospital, has run off and her husband has had a row with Rachel. Rachel has already gone to look for the dog and Thea offers to go also.

While trying to find it, she encounters a man walking his dog who seems quite amenable to taking over the search - since she has to go back and meet the children who are soon returning from school. His dog is a good tracker and is given the scent from a belt which Thea was given as a makeshift lead. The next day, Thea returns to enquire about the dog which Hilary seemed very unconcerned about - and meets Rachel on the doorstep. The woman says she has returned to patch things up, following an apologetic call from Hilary's husband - but when no one answers the door, takes it upon herself to go round the back. Thea tags along and they make a gruesome discovery in the kitchen. I won't say any more about the plot to avoid spoilers.

I had a few problems with this story sadly. One is that Thea is trying not to get involved and isn't going round asking people nosy questions as she used to do. Instead people are constantly coming to her and involving her. Yet Drew seems to be perpetually tetchy about this, even though he sent her to the house in the first place, and used to do this sort of thing himself. I recall him once going up London to interrogate someone because he was adamant that a miscarriage of justice was being done. So it is a bit hypocritical of him to react this way I feel. Possibly it is because most of the stress of the business is on his shoulders now, whereas in the past he had the dependable Maggs to rely on while he went round investigating crimes, (Maggs and her husband having taken over the original business). Thea is not suited to perform the role of an assistant undertaker by temperament and needs an outside outlet which isn't recognised by Drew until late in the story.

The other is that things seemed a bit slow. I did work out eventually near the end of the book who was responsible, although not the motive, so I can't fault that aspect of the book. But there does seem to be a lot of going back and forth over the same ground. The female detective makes a couple of cameo appearances but isn't strongly characterised this time around and her reliance on Thea makes her seem a bit feeble. There are red herrings about certain characters who behave suspiciously, but there isn't really any tension or threat to Thea herself, and I think there were opportunities to create that. So not my favourite of the series and I can only really award it an OK 2 star rating.

Second in the series about Drew Slocombe, alternative undertaker and amateur sleuth, this finds Drew now having started his eco funeral business and struggling with getting custom. Business is not helped when a body is found buried in his field, and seems to have been buried there while he was still awaiting planning permission, as if someone had heard about it and decided it was a suitable place. The woman is in her 70s, with distinctive long white hair and dressed in a simple shift and an Egyptian necklace. The police are not very interested when she cannot be identified, but Drew is unable to rest and is drawn into investigating when a woman whom he has met before and found very attractive, turns up, several months pregnant and wanting him to establish whether or not it is her mother Gwen, a free spirit who travelled widely and was, in fact, a tour guide in Egypt at one point. She doesn't want to involve the police as she says she is concerned that her husband may have murdered Gwen, but Drew suspects - rightly, as it happens - other motives.

Thus a complicated interweave begins of hidden agendas and red herrings. Drew's difficulties are compounded because someone appears to be trying to sabotague his nascent business by leaving "black magic" memorabilia and dead animals in his field, and sending poison pen letters. Also, his wife Karen, far from being the keen and likeminded partner of old, is now, following the birth of their daughter (who is now ten months old), depressed and grouchy. Part of the novel deals with these personal difficulties and Drew's struggle to provide care for their daughter so that Karen can return to her teaching job - but they then discover she is pregnant again, only this time with a child neither of them wants. Having read some of the later books in the series, I can see that this is the beginning of the difficult situation Drew later finds himself in, including his inability to love his second child as much as the first.

Although there are no grisly murders, there is a rather graphic description of childbirth which may put some people off and a rather unfortunate comment about what happens to the bodies of people who die after chemotherapy which may be upsetting to anyone who has lost someone close after such treatment.

I enjoyed the story on the whole, but the main problem is that the end is rather rushed and the solving of the mystery seems pure dumb luck (although to be fair there were some pointers to the involvement of certain individuals). Therefore on the whole I can give this only 3 stars.

Second in the Den Cooper series of crime novels, this differs from the author's other series in being more of a police procedural, which for me added interest. The cast list at the start is however very necessary as the focus does shift away from Den's difficulties as a rookie detective very frequently to show the various groups of people involved in the two deaths - one accidental, one murder
- which the story encompasses.

There is a slight red herring to do with the difficulty in interviewing one possible suspect, but that eventually leads to a good twist though I did have suspicions as to who the murderer might be. Along the way, other old family-centered crimes are laid open, and the victims are not the obvious ones with whom the police were concerned originally. Not as good as the first in this series, but still an enjoyable read.

A collection of short stories which feature various characters from the Cotswolds series with some overlap with the Drew Slocombe series (since his series merged with the Cotswolds one after A Grave in the Cotswolds).

Some times the various volumes in the series have had slight problems with pacing, but the author works well in this short length with lots of different vignettes of Cotswolds life and crime. Some are more effective than others; I particularly liked a vivid sequence of what happened at a wedding breakfast - thought the author could have reserved that one for the start of a novel actually, making it less clear who 'dunnit' of course - and the final story which ended the collection with a very good twist on the perfect murder.

As a minor spoiler, by the time these stories are set Thea and Drew are at last married. All in all a good addition to the series.

First in the Drew Slocombe series - I've only read the later volumes previously, when he encounters Thea Osborne and is gradually subsumed into the Cotswold series. In this opening volume, Drew is at the start of his sleuthing career and has been working for a few weeks at an undertaker's where he is the new boy, so is far off from starting his later struggling natural funeral business. Similarly, he and wife Karen are trying to start a family, whereas I've only seen him with his later family situation (which I won't explain to avoid spoilers for anyone who hasn't read those books).

This book has a different style than the Thea Osborne books because we don't just follow Drew around - there are a lot of scenes from other points of view and so we learn things that he is still in ignorance about. Sometimes this can lead to head hopping in a scene or things being developed perhaps more slowly than otherwise.

Drew is unsatisfied about the cause of death of a man his firm is called in to 'remove' and later to arrange the funeral for - the doctor has made a perfunctory examination and chalked it up to a heart attack, in a previously healthy 55 year old man. As Drew investigates, we gradually learn that the dead man had quite a colourful existence with more than one woman 'on the go' at a time, something his wife deliberately shut her eyes to, especially as she had had an unspecified affair herself at some point. Drew tries to obtain evidence against the deadline of an impending cremation, as he feels his suspicions and various circumstantial evidence and hearsay are not enough to convince the police.

A lot of the story is the quite realistic interactions of a 50 year old widow with her grown up sons, one of whom is 'difficult' and as it transpires is actually her husband's deceased sister's child. The various muddled motives, thoughts, emotions and misunderstandings between people in real life are quite well portrayed though will undoubtedly irritate some readers who just want to get on with the plot and find out 'whodunnit'. But I quite enjoyed the story although it is perhaps a little longer than necessary, and therefore award it a 3 star rating.

The latest edition in the Cotswolds series is an easy page turning read. This time, Thea's fiance Drew Slocombe has obtained her a job that is a change from her usual house-sitting: she is to sift through the belongings of an elderly lady who has arranged her funeral with his green funeral service, and produce an inventory. The trouble is, it's not long before Thea discovers that the elderly lady, now in a residential home, doesn't know her son has engaged her to do this. The son tells her he feels guilty and Thea starts to feel bad about it also. Then the son goes missing ...

I did wonder if this would be the last in the series as Thea and Drew are planning to marry, for him and his children to move to the Cotswolds where he owns a house and burial ground willed him by a grateful client in a much earlier book, and for her to give up the house sitting. It seems she definitely is doing the latter, but there's a hint at the end that they might continue their sleuthing in a married partnership. The events in this book put their relationship under strain at times, with Thea's stubborn insistence on finding out what really happened to the old lady's son, and there is a hint that it might all go pearshaped with them breaking up, but it turns out Drew feels he hasn't supported her sufficiently at times, with the responsibilities he has at home. So it looks as if instead of the two series, Cotswolds and West Country, based around these two characters, the books may continue as one combined series.

Third in the series about Thea Osborne and her house sitting misadventures in the Cotswolds. This one departs from the norm in being told from the first person POV of Ariadne, a childhood friend of Thea's boyfriend, Phil Hollis, Detective Superintendent. Phil and Thea are staying at the house which previously belonged to Phil's aunt Helen, who died a year ago, as Phil has decided to combine a holiday for the two of them with the process of finally clearing out his aunt's house. The house is across the road from Ariadne's, and Ariadne had been a frequent visitor, giving Helen a lot of help in her declining years.

The electricity has been cut off, so they are coping, rather unromantically given the October cold, with candles and a camping stove. In the hope that there might be an oil lamp stored in the attic, they request Ariadne's help in finding the access up there. When they enter the attic, they discover that someone has been conducting Masonic rituals there. Before long, a body is discovered and I shall say no more about the plot to avoid spoilers.

I liked this story because the viewpoint character is quite ascerbic and blunt. She is a Pagan, a knitter, and someone who lives a basic lifestyle for the most part although she does have a car - she has no TV, keeps pigs and salts her own bacon, spins her own wool and grows a lot of vegetables etc. It is interesting to see her 'take' on Thea and the relationship with Hollis especially as Ariadne had a teenage crush on him years before, but has matured in her mid-thirties and doesn't have that kind of feeling for him anymore although she is still fond of him. As I've read this series out of order, it is interesting to see some of Ariadne's thoughts on the future of the Thea-Phil relationship, as these are rather accurate in view of later events.

The same character does turn up in a later book in a minor role, though I can't remember which one now, and in that she was rather nasty and hostile to Thea, oddly so, given that she likes her in this story. There are the usual misadventures, although this time they are often initiated by Ariadne rather than Thea, and the ending, although unexpected, reminded me rather of 'Midsomer Murders'. The only thing that holds it back from a 5 star is that a number of minor plot developments were left hanging at the end.

Number 7 in the Cotswolds cosy crime series featuring the misadventures of house sitter Thea Osborne. This stared off quite interestingly and I had high hopes: it has been referred to a number of times in later books (haven't managed to read these in order) and I thought it was going to be a high octane tale of Thea snowed in and stalked by a ruthless killer. Instead, it's nothing of the sort. She finds a man dead in the snow early in her assignment and calls the police but by the time they arrive, held up by the heavy snowfall, the body has been removed and they aren't keen in going to search for it. Thea later returns and discovers that it has been dragged on a sledge to a house in the village. The dead man is George, supposedly a recluse, but as he was also a sort of substitute granddad to the two boys next door, that seems a contradiction. Also, he was popular enough with a local farming family for them to be letting him have the house rent free.

Thea becomes involved in the lives of various residents especially the family with the two boys where the mother has a high powered advertising job and the boys are mainly looked after by an au pair from Bulgaria, with some input from their father although he also has a demanding job as a manager at a large hotel somewhere. Thea ends up discussing her findings with the female detective who turns up in a few other books in the series. However, a lot of the book revolves around her duties taking care of the owner's donkey, rabbits - one of which has had babies - and the rescue dog, a lurcher which appears apathetic most of the time but at one crucial moment becomes disastrously less so (avoiding spoiler). What Thea does to the dog at that moment, although instinctive, will surely not endear her to animal lovers.

So what could have been an exciting read - because the first dead body is followed by another - is a bit of an anticlimax, especially since we are repeatedly told, following her discovery of footprints and hence the first body, that Thea is experiencing feelings of fear, dread etc. The trouble is these are not invoked and she continues to act as if she has no concerns at all - at one point, someone walks in because she has forgotten to lock the door. If she was really as scared as we are told throughout, she would have been checking and rechecking that she had locked the doors etc, even if she was irritated at herself for having to do so. It doesn't really gell with the nature of the deaths, considering the murders she has dealt with in previous books, that she is so undermined by snowfall especially since she is never really trapped in the house - she has help from a policeman in digging out part of the track so that she can get her car out, for example. She isn't as isolated from other people as the scenario requires if we were to believe that she is scared silly - and we need to be shown that in her behaviour and invoked emotions rather than just bald statements. The denouement also lacks drama though it's possible that the culprit owns up rather than let someone else, close to them and suspected by the police, take the rap. All in all, not the best installment in the series, sadly.

Ninth in the cosy crime series about Thea Osborne, house sitter extraordinaire. Her latest assignment is to look after geckos and their incubating eggs at a lovely Victorian Arts and Crafts style manor in the village of Cranham, and to welcome Donny, a man in his early seventies, who rents the nearby lodge and makes a regular afternoon visit to the manor for a cup of coffee and a chat. Thea finds him interesting despite his occasional self-pity about his apparent health problems and the loss of one of his daughters who suffered from heart disease and died after an operation. As a result, he has a fear of being dependent and lingering in hospital at the mercy of the medical profession which he hates. His surviving daughter Jemima refuses to discuss his concerns believing them morbid, and when Donny asks Thea if she could help him plan his funeral, well-meaning Thea offers to introduce him to her friend Drew, who runs an alternative funeral business in Somerset and is supposed to be opening a local branch.

A couple of days later, on the day when Thea had arranged with Drew that he will drive there to discuss options with Donny, Jemima asks for her help in gaining access to the lodge, and they find Donny dead, apparently from suicide. The rest of the story deals with the pros and cons of assisted suicide and its morality as well as the legal hurdles, plus the suspicion that Donny didn't kill himself, triggered by an anonymous tipoff to the police that Donny's girlfriend Edwina had talked about helping him when the time came. A minor subplot is Thea's attempt to help a runaway collie bitch who has escaped to the woods to have her pups because her owner killed her previous litter.

Thea is more than usually tactless in this story and rather prone to superiority and the assumption that she occupies the moral high ground, so she often doesn't seem likeable. However, most of the other characters are equally unpleasant. She seems totally deluded in her conviction that Jemima is a friend because of their experience of finding Donny, when Jemima is unrelentingly rude and obnoxious towards her. Other characters are also hostile, and it transpires that Thea's previous involvement in helping the police to solve murders elsewhere in the Cotswolds has given her a reputation. A lot of the book goes rather slowly over the same ground. There are some nice descriptions of parts of the Cotswolds, and we have the ongoing development of the relationship between Thea and Drew which is awkwardly platonic given the existence of his brain damaged wife, but the story could have been told more succinctly and hence effectively.

Number 13 in the Cotswolds cosy crime series. This time Thea is determined to keep out of trouble and is worrying about her money situation and the fact that Drew, her boyfriend, is also struggling to make ends meet with his Somerset natural burial company. She fears they will never get together properly as his young children are still grieving for their mother, and Drew's business partner on whom he relies so heavily is now pregnant.

This time, a house with an elderly corgi and a hibernating tortoise are her main charges, although an almost last minute extra duty is to visit a house in a nearby village and keep the plants watered during the first week of her two week stay and to check all is well. Thea starts off with good intentions and goes for a walk with her spaniel, Hepzie, to the other house. En route, she encounters two women and tries to have a friendly chat. One of them starts preaching at her about environmental matters and it turns out that the two are members of a local activist group which has been harrassing various farmers etc when they don't agree with the farmers' policies towards animals/the environment. Shortly afterwards, she sees the two women again with another woman, (Fe)Nella. It seems that the three were discussing Nella's engagement and her boyfriend's reluctance to set a date for the wedding. The boyfriend is a leader in the same activist organisation.

Before long, Thea is dragged into another murder mystery when the said boyfriend turns up dead in the local quarry. To be fair to her, she does often try to steer clear though her curiosity urges her to investigate, but various suspects keep turning up at the house she is sitting, sometimes to threaten her to keep out of their business. They have come to the conclusion that she is a police spy, which is ironic in the light of later developments, but I won't say more about that. As usual Thea tries to juggle her family life, worrying about her daughter's mysterious and possibly dangerous assignment as a police officer, and Drew's family problems, while looking after the elderly corgi - rather an endearing animal I thought. She is directly targeted at one point, and speculates about the motive of the murderer as well as their identity, as a local farmer is blamed by the activists.

I felt quite sorry for Thea in this story, although she can be a bit irritating on occasion. She doesn't do anything really stupid as she sometimes has, she is public spirited enough to help an injured man and try to care for his dog, and yet she is roundly abused by people who turn out to be quite unpleasant. An interesting backstory to this book is the controversial badger cull which has been taking place in real-life England, and the changing face of the Cotswolds, with houses being bought as second homes or by people who commute to London etc.

Book 11 in the cosy crime series about Thea Osborne, house sitter extraordinaire. This time, against her better judgement, Thea agrees at short notice to sit a house where the owner has had to leave at short notice, and where her only duties are to feed the wild birds in the adjoining woodland and set up an automatic camera each day to photograph them. Thea's mother, Maureen, has asked her to do the job, as Maureen has recently made contact on Facebook and now in person with Fraser, brother of the house owner.

On her first day there, Thea meets a couple of characters who will be important in the story. One is a woman in her early 30s who turns up claiming to be the daughter of Fraser, and saying she has property stored on the premises including a memory stick. Doubtful at first, Thea lets her in to claim the items. Another woman she meets is walking an extremely cute puppy, the dog making more of an impression on Thea than the owner. She is preoccupied with issues of her own: Drew Slocombe, with whom she had formed a bond in earlier books, has not been in contact with her since the death of his wife, and she is depressed about the obstacles in the way of any relationship between them, including the antipathy of his business partner, Maggs. She also starts to doubt if Fraser is all he appears to be, especially when it becomes clear later that her mum's memories of him (from before she met Thea's father) are extremely sketchy, and he is possibly a con artist.

Soon, mum and would be boyfriend descend on Thea for a visit, but just before they do so, she finds a body, as usual, and becomes embroiled in a police investigation. Complex strands that occur this time include an ongoing court case and the relationships of the various members of Fraser's family, plus the occasional interlude with Drew who is missing Thea but has until now felt constrained from contacting her due to Maggs's disapproval. Interestingly, we finally get to see Thea's mother who hasn't always been portrayed in a good light and she turns out to be intelligent, dynamic and no-nonsense to boot - in fact, I thought she made a good foil for Thea, and I think some readers at least would have preferred having her as the heroine of this series!

To avoid spoilers, I won't say more about the plot other than the fact that dog lovers may find a scene towards the end upsetting.

This is the twelfth of the cosy crime series set in the Cotswolds about the misadventures of house sitter Thea Osborne. This time, Thea's job doesn't seem too demanding apart from the emotional aspect of possible loneliness at Christmas, as she has agreed to look after a house plus a well behaved Alsatian bitch and three pet rats, over the period from 21st December to New Year's Eve.

She is determined to avoid murder and mayhem but as usual they seek her out. On her first day, she notes a funeral procession to the church, which a copy of the local paper explains - a prominent businessman in the district, running a firm that couriers medical supplies for animals, plus blood, and semen for breeding purposes - has died after an odd accident. The after funeral gathering is held next door, though she eventually discovers that this was the home of the man's mistress; the official gathering being held outside the village with the wife presiding. The mistress, Natasha, is popular even with the family and there is an odd tolerance of her relationship with the businessman.

On that first day, Thea encounters a woman called Cheryl walking a Great Dane near the church. The next day, when Thea is coming down with a nasty cold that eventually turns out to be influenza - there is an epidemic in the country generally - Cheryl turns up to visit her unexpectedly. While she is there, commotion next door draws their attention as the front window is smashed, and Cheryl, and the neighbour living on the other side of the house where Thea is staying, are among a bunch of locals who break into the house to help the woman - but it is too late. Thea soon finds herself helping the police with their enquiries, and struggling against a growing list of calamities with which she is increasingly less able to deal, while yet more odd characters impinge on her and offer themselves as candidates for the murder. And it seems that as well as the businessman, another person whose funeral was held elsewhere on the same day, has a connection with the man's firm.

Thea's budding relationship with Drew is also a strand of the story, as she has to wonder if there is really a place for her, despite his wife's death, and his business partner apparently now having some acceptance/tolerance for her after previous hostility - the business partner's change of attitude must have occurred in the book previous to this which I've not yet read - because of his busy life as a single father and alternative funeral director, struggling on the breadline.

This one is an interesting story, not least because of the sometimes needy, whinging and passive role Thea finds herself in and is annoyed by, but which rings true to anyone who has ever suffered from flu.

Number 5 in the cosy crime series set in the Cotswolds, in this the story is told from the viewpoint of Thea's boyfriend Phil, a senior policeman. His weekend with Thea at her latest house sitting is spoiled when he puts his back out, and then human remains are found near the house after a tree falls down. Soon they are embroiled in the hidden agendas of the neighbourhood, and two families in particular, with ancient links to the Templars, a medieval order of warrior monks.

This book also sees the introduction of Sonia Gladwin, a Detective Superintendant at the same level as Phil but newly transferred to the area from Cumbria. She and Thea don't instantly hit it off but by the end have reached a rapprochement where Gladwin allows Thea to bring a particular party to the farm where people are being held hostage, after having worked out the identity of the murderer. In a later book that I've read where Gladwin reappears, the two women are good friends, and Gladwin's more casual approach fits well with Thea's own.

Phil is playing catchup throughout the story, a victim of back pain and disability, and feels rather sidelined at times, having doubts about his relationship with Thea despite his declaration of love to her just before his back trouble commenced. Having read later volumes in the series already, he is right to have such doubts. The decision to tell the story from his viewpoint creates a distancing effect from Thea's character which I noticed before in 'A Grave in the Cotswolds' a later volume also told from a man's POV. It makes Thea a lot less sympathetic because we don't get an insight into why she is being quite offhand towards Phil. In a later book I do remember that she feels bad about the way she treated him during this period. The prickliness which characterises their relationship following his injury is deliberate in view of what presumably happens in the next volume which I have not yet read, so I do understand why they are often at loggerheads in this story. But it would have been nice to have seen it from Thea's viewpoint.

The underlying murder mystery is rather complex though most of it makes sense once you work out what underlies it - and I did actually work out the twist before the end. But there are certain factors that don't go anywhere such as the village re-enactments of saints' deaths and martyrdoms - why for example was the body treated in the same way as one of the saints? It is put across as a key part of the mystery and yet seems to have been forgotten about before the end. Hence with niggles like this and the lack of Thea's own viewpoint, I have rated this at 3 stars.

A departure for the 'Cotswold' series - the copy I have says on the back it is number 8 in that series and the list of Cotswold stories in the front of later books than this has it under the 'Cotswold' series, not the West Country Drew Slocombe stories - yet the whole book is told from the POV of the author's West Country series protagonist. Possibly it has been included in the Cotswold series because it is set there, or at least the burial is there which Drew, an alternative eco friendly undertaker, conducts as the story begins. In practical terms, the character spends a lot of time driving between there and his Somerset home base, and also to a house share/commune place 25 miles from his home so we don't get much sense of the Cotswolds in this book.

Drew meets Thea at the burial because she has been house sitting for the deceased. As a departure from the norm in the Cotswold series, the house sitter herself has died, but from natural causes (usually, Thea encounters a murder victim before she has had time to settle in). The burial soon causes difficulties for Drew because the deceased turns out not to own the field where he interred her; she only rented it. A jobsworth council official insists that he return for a face to face meeting by the field - I found it pretty unconvincing that a policeman turns up on the doorstep to order Drew to attend this, because surely it is a civil matter. In real life, it seems highly likely that Drew would have phoned the man, as he wanted to do. But it is crucial to the story that they meet in a remote place because he is witnessed arguing with the official who is subsequently found dead soon afterwards. Drew and Thea then join forces to try to prove Drew's innocence. He is beset and accused on all sides, with the dead man's wife eventually convincing half the community that he actually murdered the woman he buried, as well as the council official, despite the coroner's verdict of natural causes.

The story was totally different than I expected, being 1st person from Drew's POV instead of the usual 3rd person but close viewpoint of Thea. To some extent it was interesting to see her from a man's POV - and predictably, given that we've been told from book 1 onwards that Thea is a magnet for men he is attracted to her - yet it leaves her as an offstage character at times, even though she is the one who comes up with how to solve the whole connundrum. We are as much in the dark as Drew. Perhaps it would've spoiled the surprise, but I didn't find it that convincing that Thea somehow persuades the police to go along with her sting to uncover the murderer among the original deceased woman's relations and neighbours.

I did quite enjoy the story but certain aspects held it back from a 4 star rating. There is a lot of driving back and forth, with the police continually wanting Drew to come back to be interviewed in the area rather than at his home, and giving him subsequent problems with where he can afford overnight stays. This to-ing and fro-ing has the effect of prolonging the story rather unnecessarily. Drew keeps the truth from his wife because of her long standing brain injury (from the context, this happened in a previous West Country novel), yet leaves her looking after two children having made various excuses as to why he has to be absent. He takes his business partner Maggs a bit more into his confidence, but even with her he keeps things back. Although this might be a realistic reflection of human nature and he is doing it to avoid worrying his wife, it still comes across as a negative trait. And for an environmentally friendly undertaker, he spends a lot of time driving around which seems a bit contradictory.

This is the sixth in the series of cosy crime stories featuring Thea Osborne, house sitter who is always being involved in murder investigations. This time Thea looks on the house sitting as a retreat to nurse her grief at her father's recent death, so is not pleased when her older sister Emily, who had a poor relationship with their father and who always put Thea down as a child, wants to come and visit to talk over her guilt and regrets at not being close to him. Emily stays for a few hours then rushes off - only to return in different, shapeless clothes (her own having been taken for examination by the police) and in an upset state, having witnessed a violent attack on a man that left his skull crushed. She tells Thea she got lost on leaving the house and after driving around in the rain and darkness for a while stopped in a gateway to try to work out where she was. She then witnessed the man being violently assaulted in a nearby layby and ran at the murderer shouting, which made him run off.

Things take a turn for the worst when Thea's boyfriend, Detective Superintendant Phil Hollis, begins to nurse suspicions because certain things about Emily's story don't quite add up. This damages their relationship which has already begun to falter after Phil injured his back at Thea's previous house sitting - he is still not fully recovered, their physical relationship has been on hold for months, and they both have to eventually acknowledge that for Thea that is his main attraction. So this novel throws up some less attractive aspects of her character.

Thea soon discovers that the dead man was a friend of Emily's husband, and this leads the police to view her with more suspicion. To make things worse, Thea had met a vicar soon after the murder, and been attracted to him - she now finds out that he is the dead man's half brother. Emily proceeds to have a breakdown and various family members try to recruit Thea's help, such as Emily's husband, and Thea's mother. More complications ensue when a friend of Thea's met on a previous house sitting turns out to be the girlfriend of the vicar - and then Thea starts to realise that he is not as nice as he appears, although at first she resists hearing this from Phil. The police turn their attention to the vicar and her friend becomes quite hostile, blaming Thea rather illogically.

One of Thea's duties at the present house is to feed two dogs which are kept chained up outside a large kennel building in the yard. She told the owners when she took on the job that she couldn't leave dogs chained like that and they had agreed she could take them singly on a lead. But when she finds only one lead, she improvises a collar for one and takes both, plus her own dog, for a walk, with the inevitable result. I did find that a rather stupid thing to do, but it is essential to the plot of the book, because the fallout from that one action leads to drastic repercussions, which I will not go into, not wishing to divulge spoilers.

I found this story more interesting than some of the others in the series, and the ending was fairly decent, whereas some of the others have been let down by slightly weak endings. So this one merits 4 stars.

The fifth of this series that I have read, and I managed to read them in order of publication so wasn't thrown by elements that continue from other books, such as Thea's friendship with Drew Slocombe, the protagonist of another of the author's series, who would be more than a friend if it wasn't for his increasingly ill wife. In the previous of these that I read, Thea cleared Drew of murder and his wife was worsening, with a brain scan booked. It seems that in the intervening book she lapsed into a coma and is now in hospital with Drew trying to come to terms with the idea that she will not recover.

Thea is housesitting in the picturesque village of Snowshill, home of an iconic National Trust house, which unfortunately she (and thus the reader) does not get a chance to explore. All too soon, she is embroiled in another murder, a distressing one involving a child. I did wonder, when he first appeared tormenting animals and damaging plants, whether he would be the victim and so it proves. Thea is convinced that the single mother, Gudrun, is not responsible and sets out on a crusade to exonerate her. Meanwhile, there is a cast of rather mysterious characters including the ditsy owner, owner's ex-husband and their two adopted children, plus another single mother and her daughter who live opposite and a slightly sinister next door neighbour. And a horsey woman whom Thea meets just before she discovers the boy's body.

Another thread is the ongoing developments with Drew and his wife, and the antipathy of his business partner Maggs to Thea, whom she views as a cross between a gold digger and a siren.

The detective in this book is a woman, surname Gladwin, who apparently appeared in one or two earlier volumes, though not the ones I've read (which were books 1, 2, 4 and 8). Luckily she and Thea get on well, to the point where Gladwin takes Thea into her confidence a bit too much.

There is a good build up of red herrings and mysteries about the various minor characters which kept me guessing, not usually correctly. I do think the ending misses a trick though. Without giving too much away, a lot more tension could have been developed as Thea doesn't work out who the murderer is - a minor character discloses that, and although Thea is locked in with the murderer, she isn't involved in the bust up at the end. Personally, rather than have one of the family members go beserk and wreck the place, an ending where Thea blurted out the truth in her usual blunt way, then had to use the ornaments to throw at the murderer and fend the person off till rescue could arrive would have worked much better for me.

Fourth in the series of Thea Osborne 'cosy crime' novels in which she sits houses and ends up involved in a murder mystery due to the propensity of villains to wait until the usual owners are on holiday and a housesitter is on the premises who doesn't know anyone or the area. This time, Thea is 'granny sitting' really, looking after an eccentric 92 year old who seems perfectly lucid and even cunning at times, and very confused/demented at other times. And as the story goes on, Thea starts to realise that sometimes the confusion is an act, so that Gladys can get her own way. It isn't hard to feel some sympathy given that her daughter who lives in the main house next door and her husband have divided their garden from the old lady's and keep the connecting door between the properties locked, plus they have installed an alarm that goes off if she opens her front door. So Gladys is pretty much a prisoner in her own home and unsurprisingly uses the absence of her 'gaolers' to do some exploring.

I didn't feel this story quite matched up to the first two in the series (haven't read the third yet). There was potential - we get to meet Thea's daughter who is a police trainee - and there is an intriguing rap poet character. Thea's lover, Detective Superintendent Phil Hollis, is offstage this time, represented by a couple of phone calls, although her deceased husband's brother makes a cameo appearance as he is another senior policeman who is mentoring her daughter. Daughter Jessica is awaiting a disciplinary hearing having slapped a child who assaulted her at a tense inner city confrontation between the child's parents, and has come for a few days with her mum who is trying to divert and distract her from her anxiety.

Part of the book switches into Jessica's POV to allow us to see the crime scene processing at the murdered man's house, since Thea could not realistically be present. The switch back to Thea is a bit confusing; just needed a scene break. But possibly it is elements such as this which make the book a bit 'flat' for me. Also, there is a thread through the story about Joanna Southcott, the 19th century prophetess, who I had actually heard of (she is an important background element in Jane Rodger's novel 'Mr Wroe's Virgins', a superb book I read years ago), but disappointingly this doesn't really go anywhere. It is a red herring and most of the characters in the book are indeed red herrings. And the resolution is a letdown with a character who has been talked about but never encountered being instrumental in the murder and the person everyone suspects being indeed the culprit. This is a real contrast with the previous books; even where I worked out who the murderer was in book 2, there was still other elements I wasn't clear about, and the characters did add to the air of paranoia in that story. Here, they are all much too gentle and non threatening.

I found it a riveting page turner from the start. Lilah is the daughter of a farmer who is not popular with many in the local area, and the nightmare starts for her when she finds him dead in the slurry pit one morning. As the story develops, more people come under suspicion, especially when the deaths begin to mount up.

I liked the characterisation where Lilah and her mother in particular are developed as very different people who rub each other up the wrong way, and where emotions such as shock are dealt with in a realistic and powerful way. There is also a subplot of a love interest between Lilah and Den, a police constable she once had a crush on at school.

The setting is also very well realised, certainly for the period when written (1999), obviously due to the author's own practical experience with life on a farm and looking after livestock. I've only read this author's cozy crime novels previously, but this shows that she is more than capable of producing a darker story dealing with the undercurrents of emotion and spite in a rural setting.

In some ways this cozy crime novel is a book of two halves. At first, there is a lot of debating among the protagonist, Simmy, and her two friends Melanie and Ben, regarding a bunch of flowers that Simmy, a florist, was paid to deliver an old lady for a mystery granddaughter the old lady knows nothing about. Soon, Simmy is called upon by the police to give someone an alibi for the time of death of another old lady who lives nearby and turns out to have been murdered.

Simmy is a worrier and is often distracted by her anxieties about snow or other everyday things, rather than the murder mystery, but despite her best efforts, is soon drawn into family secrets and lies. Just when I had got used to the gentle, lulling pace - whoosh! Something drastic happened which I won't spoil here. The second half of the book deals with its impact, and events build to a climax where the identity of the murderer is finally revealed. I did not work out who it was either. The book characterises the protagonist and her friends in a nicely understated way and is a good read for anyone who likes cozy crime. This is apparently the second in the series of Lakeland set mysteries by the author, and its nice to read something set in the Lakes, having visited there several times.

When a herdsman is found dead in a barn, the most reasonable suspect is the man who DS Den Cooper's girlfriend jilted him for just a month before the wedding. Unfortunately there is not a lot of evidence to say he or anybody else actually did it.

An interesting take not on whodunnit but on did he really do it.

I have mixed feelings about this one. It's the second in a series, about Thea Osborne, a widow in her forties who takes jobs as a house-sitter. Like the first book, Thea doesn't interact with many people except some law enforcement officers, nor go much beyond the property she's caring for till quite a ways in the book. So the books were slow starters for me. About halfway in, things picked up, and I became more engaged. Thea is an interesting character, in that she's not what I would consider sympathetic to others. It especially shows up when her sister first arrives in this book. I find Thea sometimes refreshing as a character, sometimes aggravating. I would've liked to learn more details about life in the Cotswolds, how the residents interact. Tope portrays the Cotswolds in these two books almost as suburbs where people don't interact that much. Maybe that is the case now. I wish she provided more details, or had Thea interact more with the social groups she does observe or come into contact with.½

I have read two in this series before.

Thea Slocombe generally does house sitting, but this time she is taking on looking after 3 dogs as well, for 5 days, while their owner makes a visit to Europe selling antique clocks.

On the first day she looks out of an upstairs window to see a car pulling up outside in the street. A youngish woman gets out and is almost immediately mown down by a speeding car which not only seems to aim for her but also doesn't stop. Stunned by what she has seen, and convinced that the victim knew the driver of the car, Thea contacts a policewoman whom she knows well from earlier cases that she has been involved.

When it turns out that the victim is the niece of the man she is doing the house sitting for, Thea cooperates with the police to try to discover the reason for the murder. And what a dysfunctional family is revealed!

The plot eventually becomes very complex, and to my mind the author was struggling to hold it all together.