Showing results by narrator "Simon Brett" in All Categories

When Alexandra Richards approaches professional declutterer Ellen Curtis to ask her to help sort out her mother's chaotic flat, Ellen gets the impression Alexandra doesn't like her mother very much. But when Ingrid Richards' body is discovered in her burned-out home, Alexandra's exasperated words don't seem such a joke. Due to the hazardous state of the victim's over-cluttered residence, the police are inclined to dismiss her death as an unfortunate accident. Ellen's not so sure.

The affluent seaside resort of Smalting is unaccustomed to crime. So when human remains are found beneath the floorboards of a beach hut, the community is awash with suspicion. Amateur sleuths Carole Seddon and best friend Jude are drawn into the mystery, and their suspicion quickly falls on attractive Philly Rose, a young Londoner newly arrived in the area, whose boyfriend has recently vanished.

Jude has never been averse to a bit of a flutter; her friend Carole, on the other hand, thinks that the local betting shop is a den of iniquity. But when Jude stumbles upon the body of a Polish immigrant, Tadeusz Jankowski, the race is on to find his killer. The odds aren’t looking good. No one seems to know anything about the mysterious Tadeusz - even his sister can’t shed any light on what he was doing in Fethering.

Although she hadn't known Leonard Mallett well, Carole Seddon feels duty bound to attend her fellow committee member's funeral. As she suspected, the sermon is very predictable - not unlike Leonard himself. What she couldn't have predicted was that the deceased's daughter would use the occasion to publicly accuse her stepmother of murder. Did Heather Mallett really kill her husband? Deciding to get to the heart of the matter, Carole's neighbour Jude joins the new community choir - and discovers that amidst the clashing egos and petty resentments lurk some decidedly false notes.

After a long period of "resting", life is looking up for Charles Paris, who has been cast as the Ghost of Hamlet's Father and First Gravedigger in a new production of Hamlet. Ophelia is played by Katrina Selsey, who won the role through a television talent show. Hamlet himself is also played by a reality TV contestant, Jared Root - and the two young stars have rather different views than the more experienced members of the cast. But when the company reach the first staging post of their tour, matters get more serious, with one member of the company seriously injured in what appears to be an accident, and another dead....

The Dowager Duchess has decided to sell off the less important family possessions. Blotto and Twinks are dispatched to help the valuer. He spies some Egyptian artifacts and in some excitement rushes back to London, leaving Blotto and Twinks alone in the attic, where they are drawn to a sarchophagus decorated with hieroglyphs. Twinks starts to translate: "Anyone who desecrates this shrine will be visited by the Pharoah's curse..." - just as Blotto prises the lid off.

Charles Paris’ acting career plumbs new depths when he takes the part of a possible murder victim in ‘Public Enemies’, a true-crime television series. Finding himself in a bizarre world somewhere between police procedure and showbiz, Charles is inexorably drawn into the investigation... especially after the dismembered limbs start turning up. The viewers of ‘Public Enemies’ get caught up in the macabre jigsaw puzzle of death; it is ghastly, of course, but it does make good television.

Landing a minor part in the Empire Theatre Eastbourne’s Christmas production of Cinderella, Charles Paris soon discovers that his main role is to gently introduce the show’s baffled American star, Kenny Polizzi, to the bizarre customs of English pantomime. During their sessions in the local pub, Charles finds himself increasingly caught up in Polizzi’s tangled affairs. But Charles is about to be far more involved than he might wish when he stumbles across a body beneath Eastbourne Pier.

'What? You mean the earl does it for money? That's way beyond the barbed wire!' This explosion of disgust from Blotto is provoked when Twinks informs him of the activities of the Earl of Woking. The gentleman in question is owner of Clusters, a stately home not far from Tawcester Towers, and he has been renting out parts of Clusters for private functions - and charging his guests! The discovery of this appalling lapse in aristocratic behaviour sets Blotto and Twinks off on their latest adventure.

The two aristocratic siblings Blotto and Twinks are once again launched into another death-defying adventure, this time in the civil war-torn republic of Jalapeno, in Mexico. But how did they ever get to such a foreign and distant land in the first place? For Twinks it was an easy decision - to escape her mother's match-making attempts she sets out to visit her old friend, Begonia Guiteras, who lives in Jalapeno, which is fortuitously on the doorstep of an Aztec dig Twinks wants to work on.

Tawcester Towers, the family seat of the Lyminster family, has suffered an unwelcome injection of distant cousins - so distant that they aren't even British! Count Igor and Count Lyudmilla Bashusky had to flee Russia after the Revolution and have spent the intervening years building up debts in the hotels of Europe's capitals and sponging off ever more exasperated (and distant) relatives.

While the youth uprising sweeps across Europe, a debate about Franz Kafka appears in student magazines, arguing that publishing the texts Kafka left behind against his will is unfaithful to his legacy. When Kafka's best friend, Brod, is injured in an attempted assassination, assailant Ferdy Kaplan is captured and questioned by Commissioner Muller at the West Berlin police station.

A quick trip to the capital goes horribly wrong when Blotto and Twinks get accidentally involved in London's criminal underworld. It starts innocently enough at the intimate review 'absolutely everyone is talking about', Light and Frothy, where its glamorous star, Frou Frou Gavotte, has rather taken the fancy of Blotto's school friend Giles 'Whiffler' Trumpington. But while Blotto and Whiffler wait for the star outside the theatre to take her to dinner, Whiffler is seized and manhandled into the back of a cab which then drives off into the night.

Once again, the plumbing at Tawcester Towers is causing consternation for the Dowager Duchess, so - unusually for her - she gives her blessing for Blotto to take part in the 'Great Road Race' in his beloved Lagonda... so long as he wins. The first prize of 10,000 pre-War sovereigns will help towards repairing the leaky ancestral home. Blotto elects to take chauffeur Corky Froggett as his spare mechanic, while Twinks is despatched by her mother to the Highlands, to paint water colours and bag herself a wealthy husband.

Another hair-raising adventure featuring the aristocratic brother and sister sleuthing duo! The end of the cricket season spells gloom for Blotto until he is invited to bat against the Hollywood cricket team out in sunny LA, where rain never stops play. And so begins the latest adventure for Blotto and his supremely gifted sister, Twinks.

Blotto and Twinks are off on another adventure - and this time they're bound for the Alpine village of Luzvimmen in Switzerland, where Blotto participates in racing the prestigious and very fast Croissant Run, though someone seems determined to sabotage his chances. Twinks, on the other hand, is on a mission to rescue her friend's sister from the sinister finishing school she is trapped in - the Convent of the Sacred Icicle.

An idle conversation on the merits of the glorious game with an old Etonian chum is just the excuse Blotto needs to put himself forward for a cricket tour to foreign climes...and so begins the next adventure for our intrepid duo, where the action takes them to India where, as everyone knows, the finest cricket players hail from - as well as the world's most skilled jewel thieves.

As the First world War rapidly approaches, we arrive in a sleepy south coast town where Max Carrados, the celebrated blind detective, is soon investigating the sudden death of the local museum curator. All is not as it seems, as our blind hero finds himself on the cliff top in a duel to the death with the ruthless German spymaster who is the one who knows The Secret of Headlam Height.