Carole Seddon, newest of veteran Brett's three series sleuths (actor Charlie Paris and widow Emily Pargeter are the others) gets a second turn following her debut in The Body on the Beach. Seddon, an early Home Office retiree, prides herself on her sensible approach to life a snug place in Fethering, a routine that involves mental exercises like the Times crossword puzzles and long walks along beaches or out on the Downs. On a walk on the South Downs near Weldisham (a village that "looked from the outside as though it hadn't changed much since the days when Agatha Christie might have set a murder there"), a driving rain forces Carole to seek shelter in an abandoned barn, where she discovers a bag of human bones. The local police are informed, and rumors spread to the effect that the bones might have belonged to a missing young woman named Tamsin. Soon Carole and her somewhat mysterious and exotic friend Jude are busily involved in sussing out information on their own partly for adventure, and partly because Tamsin had once turned to Jude for help. Carole's lack of self-confidence, really a lack of self-awareness, is meant to be endearing, but becomes irksome at times. All in all, Brett's more than competent plotting, a cast of characters that play against type to keep things sufficiently interesting and his take on village gentrification combine for fine entertainment. The author's core fans and those nostalgic for the traditional English cozy will snap this up. (Aug. 7) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Weldisham, a rural village recently tarted up by London nabobs longing for a place to weekend in the country with all the mod cons, is in for a bit of a shock when Carole Seddon, from the neighboring village of Fethering, takes a walk on the Downs, seeks shelter in a derelict barn during a storm, and discovers two bags full of cleanly picked bones. Whose? The regulars at the Hare and Hounds suggest they might be those of Detective Sergeant Lennie Baylis's mum, who walked out on her abusive husband years back. Or of Graham Forbes's first wife, who left with him for a posting in Kuala Lumpur, where she supposedly ran off with a university professor. Or of young Tamsin Lutteridge, who despite extreme inertia from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, has vanished. Soon enough, Carole's chum and amateur-sleuthing companion Jude finds Tamsin, leaving Carole to fend off an unwanted suitor, offend prizewinning former char Pauline and her menacing son Brian, and discover yet another dilapidated barn that acted as a repository for those old bones. Gossip, innuendo, quaffs at the pub, arson, another death, and a last-chapter cargo of drugs, thugs from the south, and three Weldisham ne'er-do-wells out to conquer the town-all come into play before Carole contemplates life beside a publican and Jude decides Ireland might just be her cuppa. Occasionally witty, but Brett's send-up of the congenial village mystery needs more companionable protagonists than self-effacing Carole and cryptic Jude ("The Body on the Beach", 2000).