Brett picks a perfect spot for his trademark blend of social satire and cozy mystery: an art gallery, positioned on the High Street of the West Sussex village of Fethering. The gallery is giving a "Private View" showing of a controversial artist who uses guns and ammo for shock value. The showing draws a Restoration comedy's worth of characters from different worlds—artists, socialites, would-be artists and socialites, members of the middle and upper-middle class of Fethering, and the workers who set it all up. At the showing, the twentysomething daughter of a nouveau-riche couple lashes out at the artist, once her lover, and is later found dead. Since the young woman had a history of depression, her slashed wrists are seen by police as a suicide method. Enter Brett's avocational detective duo, Jude and Carole (Jude is a New Age healer; Carole is an uptight, retired Home Office worker) who sense that dead woman was murdered. Brett expands the action from Fethering to a lavish country house to an artist's studio in London. As always, he pinions pretension perfectly—perhaps the most shocking detail in a mystery full of shocks is how the nouveau-riche couple try to cover up any investigation of the daughter's death so it won't interrupt their social climbing and the opening of their other daughter's "glamping" (glamorous camping) site. Readers of the Fethering series get both individual cozy mysteries and a wonderful narrative arc tracing Jude and Carole's relationship and, especially, Carole's gradual thawing. Brilliant, biting, and fun.
