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Polly's Cake Shop has been a feature of the shopping parade for many years, but when its owner announces her retirement, the Fethering residents start to worry about the loss of this popular amenity. Alarmed by rumours that the café might become a Starbucks, a group clubs together to form the Save Polly's Cake Shop Action Committee.
The plan is that Polly's should become a community venture, managed and run by volunteers from the village. Roped in to help, Jude finds the committee meetings fraught with petty power struggles, clashing personalities and monstrous egos. Matters take a turn for the worse when she and Carole come across a badly-decomposed body on Fethering beach – and uncover a link to Polly's. Not only do the two neighbours have to find out whodunit, they are also faced with the thorny question: is it possible to run a business on that most volatile of commodities - goodwill?|Coerced into joining the Save Polly's Cake Shop Action Committee, Fethering resident Jude finds the committee meetings fraught with petty power struggles and clashing egos. Matters take a turn for the worse when she and her neighbour Carole come across a badly-decomposed body on Fethering beach - and uncover a link to Polly's.
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Creators
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Series
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Publisher
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Release date
March 1, 2016 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781780107295
- File size: 760 KB
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781780107295
- File size: 760 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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January 25, 2016
Early in British author Brett’s witty 17th mystery featuring Jude Nichol and Carole Seddon (after 2014’s The Tomb in Turkey), the reader learns that Carole is secretly addicted to a TV show featuring nuns and midwives, so she settles down “for an evening of prayer and placentas.” On a more serious note, at Polly’s Cake Shop, a popular eatery in the Sussex town of Fethering, a waitress, who’s also a client of Jude’s healing services, finds a body in the storeroom, but thinks she’s hallucinating. A few weeks later, Jude and Carole witness a body pulled from the sea. Meanwhile, Polly’s owner wants to sell out, and a group of residents, led by the delightfully blimpish Commodore Quintus Braithwaite, want to take it over with a volunteer crew. And the unemotional, uptight Carole goes bonkers over her new granddaughter. As mayhem ensues, Jude and Carole have few clues to go on. Only the low-key ending disappoints. -
February 1, 2016
This is a rare misfire for Brett, who was awarded the Diamond Dagger by the UK-based Crime Writers' Association in 2014 for lifetime achievements in crime fictionmore than 90 novels, most of them mysteries, including the Charles Paris, Mrs. Pargeter, Blotto and Twinks, and Fethering series, of which this is the latest, surprisingly lackluster entry. The cozy setting, that of the tiny seaside village of Fethering, is intact, enhanced by its two part-time amateur detectives, neighbors and somewhat prickly friends Carole, a retired Home Office bureaucrat, and Jude, a healer. A body is found (cozily enough, in a tea shop), which then disappears from said premises to turn up later on the beach. Before the body appears, the tea shop, a village favorite, is the center of local dismay over the plans to turn it into a community-center tea shop, or worse. The problem is that Brett's portrayal of the civic squabble convinces us that committee work is boring by actually boring us with far too much reporting on the interminable meetings. Still, the author's fans will be willing to persevere for those occasional glimpses of Brettian wit.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)
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