A SERIES INTRO FROM SIMON BRETT

Fethering is a fictional village on the coast in west Sussex which, like most villages in the world of cosy crime, boasts a higher murder rate than Chicago. Its amenities include the Crown & Anchor pub, All Saints Church, a railway station and a parade of shops. The residents range from those who live in the Shorelands Estate (rich and up themselves) to those in the Downside Estate (poor and, so far as the Shorelands Estate dwellers were concerned, ‘common’). And there were about a dozen people in the village who reckon they’re the local squire.

A setting with such a tempting murder rate must, of course, be home to some amateur sleuths. In the Fethering Mysteries, these are two women in their fifties. Carole Seddon, divorced and retired from the Home Office to a house called High Tor, leads a hidebound and restricted life. She doesn’t like to draw attention to herself. She has a Labrador, Gulliver, so that she doesn’t look lonely when she walks on Fethering Beach.

It is when she gets a new next-door neighbour that the two women develop their interest in solving crime. The newcomer, Jude, who moves into Woodside Cottage, is much more laid-back than Carole. Having had a varied career and chequered love life, she now works as a healer, a calling which Carole regards as mostly ‘mumbo-jumbo’. But somehow the two contrasting characters work well together when there’s a murder involved.

The settings of the murders are frequently businesses in Fethering. Among the twenty-two previous books in the series have been The Stabbing in the Stables, Blood at the Bookies and Death Under the Dryer. So, there are no prizes for guessing where the twenty-third — Bloodshed in the Bookshop — is set.