When Jude decides to visit the local betting shop one day to put a flutter on the Derby (or some such thing), she is met by the arresting sight of a young man staggering in, and collapsing, before blood pools around his inert form.
Soon afterwards, he dies. But Jude has discovered the body, and so, the police question her.
Of course the police do not share the details of their investigation, which appears to be going nowhere. Of course Jude is disconcerted and wants to know what is going on. And so she, and prickly friend Carole Seddon, decide to hunt down the murderer.
In the course of their inquiries, they nearly get murdered themselves.
As usual, Simon Brett’s entertaining cozy sheds light on what it was like to live in Britain during the 2000s. And so, the murder victim is Polish. A romantic young man, he came over to England once he’d met and fallen in love with an English girl whom he’d met at a music festival in Leipzig. The girl in question, Sophia Urqhart, is not nearly so interested in him. Plus, she has a very different view of life. Unlike Tadek, the Polish boy who is smitten with her, Sophia does not think one should drift through life in a haze of romantic bliss. It doesn’t help Tadek’s cause that Sophia’s romantic life is taken up with her narcissistic drama teacher.
We are not far into this novel when Tadek’s sister Zosia arrives from Warsaw. Kind-hearted Jude, sensing that the girl has no money, offers her the spare bedroom in Woodside Cottage, her house that sits adjacent to Carole Seddon’s more pretentious High Tor. And so Jude and Carole get to work, with the help of Zosia, and the various friends she knows who cast light on Tadek’s life.
Their search takes them to the nearby community college (as we would say in the States), rather pretentiously called Clincham University, where we meet Andy Constant, the narcissistic drama teacher who has quite the harem amongst all the college-age girls. Constant is too busy attempting to seduce Jude to be of much help. But a break in the case comes when someone stabs him, sending him to the nearby hospital.
Of course, I cannot say more without spoiling this story for those of you who have not yet read it. But if you are an aficionado of British crime drama, you could do worse than curl up on a cold evening, book (or Kindle) in hand, and peruse this piece. Of course, with your requisite cup of tea.
