Killing in the Café, The

Love the Fethering Mysteries! Simon Brett's series are always a delight and an automatic buy for our library. Our patrons adore him!

The village of Fethering, on England’s South Coast, is undergoing a crisis. Polly’s Café, a mainstay of the shopping centre, is about to be sold, and the owner isn’t particularly fussed who she sells it too. Soon, Jude, professional healer and amateur sleuth, finds herself enlisted onto a committee to preserve the future of the business as a Community Café – something that, of course, requires volunteers and cooperation, neither commodity being easily available.

Jude only ended up at the meeting due to one of her clients, who came to her concerning her own mental health. Sara has been recovering from all sorts of problems and finally when she seems to be in a safe place, she stumbles across a body – in the back room of Polly’s Café. But the body vanishes, causing Sara to doubt her sanity, and when it washes up on the beach, everyone assumes that it was suicide. Everyone, of course, apart from Jude and her friend Carole…

Very tempted to review this just with the phrase “Same old story”. I’ve reviewed the Fethering series before – this is the seventeenth in the series. Elsewhere on the blog is:

The Body On The Beach Death On The Downs The Strangling On The Stage The Tomb In Turkey Fans of the series will be pleased to see another adventure for Jude and Carole, focussing a little more on Jude this time. And there will be no surprises for regular readers. It follows the “cozy noir” format, more than the classic mystery, with Jude and Carole talking to people until someone tells them the name of the murderer. So provided that’s what you’re expecting, there’s plenty to enjoy here as ever.

Brett is a witty writer, which helps when the case doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Even so, there is a long section where there are no real developments – long in terms of the time passing in the tale, as it’s set over several months, with Brett more concerned with the parallel plot of the future of the café, while the victim lies unidentified. But, as I said, fans of the series will be very happy to see the return of the series, although there are stronger books to start off with – either of The Strangling On The Stage or The Tomb In Turkey, for example. Recommended for fans of the series.

I am a devotee of Simon Brett's Charles Paris and somehow had never read a Fethering mystery before. Charles Paris books have made me laugh aloud and although I cannot say the same of this, there were quite a few moments where I certainly smiled! The Killing in the Cafe is smart and quick - a local cafe is closing and residents look for a way to save it. Alas, saving it involves community meetings and action committees which leaves one wondering why only one person is murdered! A pleasant easy read.

The village is atwitter. Polly's Cake Shop owner is retiring and is going to sell her shop. They need to keep that shop open because it's a great tourist attraction. What are they going to do?

Severn House and Net Galley allowed me to read this book for review (thank you). It will be published March 1st.

Someone gets the idea of making the shop a community project and having folks volunteer their time. That's not very likely but it could be doable if enough help. But who's got the capital to buy the building? And, God forbid, what if a Starbucks went in instead!

While all the fuss is going on about who will own the shop, one of Jude's clients tells her she thinks she's having a nervous breakdown again. She thought she saw a body in the storeroom with a bullet hole in his head. The gun was on the window sill, so it wasn't suicide. But when she looks again, there's no body, no gun, and no blood. Was it a hallucination? Jude thinks not, but with no evidence there's not much she can do. Then the body surfaces about three weeks later. It sure looks like murder now.

The police seem to be getting nowhere, so Jude and Carole start doing some snooping of their own. As always, there are a lot of secrets in the village, many of them not nice.

My favorite part of this story is where the newcomers to the village think that Jude and Carole are lesbians because they do so much together. They even advise them to get married which made me smile. Oh, people, haven't you heard of friends? They weren't even that good at being friends sometimes.

I didn't suspect the killer. It was a bit of an odd story with an even odder ending but all's well that ends well. I've read Mr. Brett's work for some time and his stories are interesting, hold your attention and entertain you. That's what this one did too.

Carole and Jude are very different -- one is a former Home Office wonk with a painful past and the other is an alternative medicine healer with a relaxed attitude toward life -- but they are very close. Close enough that when one of Jude's clients sees a dead body in a cafe storeroom, Carole gets involved.

They choose not to discuss the event with the police, even when they encounter the body themselves on the beach. Who is it, how did it get to the beach, and what does it have to do with the cafe's increasingly volatile role in the community?

Simon Brett writes a more sophisticated novel than the average cozy mystery writer, but cozy fans should love this one anyway. A good puzzle, plenty of quirky characters, and a tea shop setting make it a fun read.

Free spirited life counselor Jude and her practical, no-nonsense neighbor Carole are once more thrust into investigating a murder when one of Jude’s clients finds a body… a body that goes missing shortly after its discovery. Jude’s client, Sara, believes she may have been hallucinating, but Jude isn’t so sure.

Polly’s Cake Shop has long been a fixture in Fethering. Now, the owner is selling, and residents fear the cafe may become a Starbucks, part of a vast commercial enterprise foreign to village life. Sara convinces Jude to take part in the committee organized to Save Polly’s Cake Shop. Jude dreads the personality clashes and the inevitable ego trips involved.

Then the body reappears, now badly decomposed on Fethering Beach. The dead man is a stranger, but he visited Polly’s Cake Shop the afternoon before his death and asked to speak with the owner. Who was he and why did he come to Fethering? Who would kill a stranger and leave the body in the Cake Shop's back room?

I enjoyed The Killing in the Cafe immensely. Jude and Carole make a good investigative team. Jude is more intuitive while Carole is more straightforward. Although their approaches differ, these two intelligent women complement each other. The bluff and bluster of the SPCSAC rang true, as anyone who has sat on any committee will attest. I absolutely loved Binnie. She was such a colorful person, who clearly lived life as she pleased. The only item that just didn’t feel right was Jude’s easy acquiescence to Sara’s request not to contact police - despite the handkerchief spotted with the blood of the victim. Had there not been physical evidence, I would have been more understanding.

All in all, Simon Brett has given readers yet another wonderful cozy to add to their reading list.

5/5

The Killing in the Cafe is available for preorder and will be released March 1, 2016.

I received a copy of The Killing in the Cafe from the publisher and netgalley.com in exchange for an honest review.

—Crittermom

Running a cake shop can be murder (2/17/16)

New Fetheing mystery with Carole and Jude. When the owner of Polly's Cake Shop decides to retire, the town residents don't know what they will do. When Jude and Carole find a body on the beach and discover that there is a link to Polly's what will they do? Very funny mystery series with great characters!

The Killing in the Café is a definitive cozy mystery!. This book is non stop fun. Its has intelligent fast paced writing and a great sleuth that moves along through interesting characters, a witty protagonist and a lovable setting. I adore this book and hope for more in the series. I highly recommend the Fethering Mystery series for your reading fun. Thank you for the advance reading copy Severn House. It was a delight to read from cover to cover. True mystery fans will adore this book.

Another cozy mystery in the long running Fethering series finds Jude and Carole deciphering the mystery of an unidentified body washed up on Fethering beach. Most fun is Brett's sly send up of local committees and the many characters they attract. A fun addition to the series.

We're back in Fethering for the 17th outing for Carole & Jude the curious, nosey, "lesbian", crime duo.
In fact they live next door to each other, lead separate lives and are two very contrasting women; both have the ability to wheedle out the truth from direct questioning which places their success rate higher than the local police. Of course they are not lovers but over time have become close friends; Jude is a touchy/feely person who offers a range of healing therapies while Carole is a retired Civil Servant who is more straight laced and reserved.
The series has a fun, comedic approach that throws insight on communities where a death/murder often undermines the social norms. All titles rely on alliteration and perhaps Brett is struggling to find suitable ones, but we'll allow K for cafe. What the author isn't running out of however are amusing scenarios where we are drawn into a different aspect of village/small town living and dying. Here a local cafe is in danger of closing thus allowing a international player into the village. Therefore those who like to tut and uphold certain standards form a community action group to offset an american takeover and maintain English traditions.
Against this background is an interesting case of the missing body. A waitress who has suffered mental anxiety believes she saw a dead man in the storeroom one evening, but between locking up and the next day's service the corpse has vanished. She seeks out Jude to help as she thinks she is having visions again and losing it. When Carole & Jude find a body of a man washed up on the beach one morning it appears it may be the same individual from the Cafe's stockroom.
I am amazed that these two amateur detectives manage to get so many people to open up to them and like completing a jigsaw the mystery is slowly solved.
While obviously more Midsomer and less Luther the stories do have a real crime mystery to solve and as a mirror on society delivers a credible case and an entertaining story. I find them like a tasty sorbet that refreshes my reading palate to go again on something tougher and involved.

3.5 stars

Simon Brett's Fethering mystery series is entertaining, with its female odd couple sleuths: Jude, the caftaned healer, and Carole the uptight Home Office retiree. Their nosiness knows no bounds, but the dry wit and quirky chemistry makes for an enjoyable read. In this outing, the mystery begins with a disappearing corpse and takes off from there.

I received an ARC of this novel through NetGalley. The opinions expressed are my own.

This was my first time reading a book in this series by Simon Brett. I typically read more cozy type mysteries, but this one had a bit more "meat" to the story. When Polly's Cake Shop is being sold because the owner wants out of the business the community is upset to think a Starbucks may be moving in. So they ban together to form an action committee to make sure that doesn't happen. Only Polly's Cake Shop seems to be the scene of a crime that no one wants to talk about when a dead body is discovered in the storage room and turns up on the beach weeks later. No one seems to know the man's connection to Fethering. Naturally, Carole and Jude can't let a mystery like this pass without delving into it and digging the answers up.

I was given an advanced e-copy of this book by the publishers through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

A charming mystery set in a seaside town

This is the sixth in Simon Brett’s Fethering Mysteries series and all in all it is a jolly good and enjoyable read.

It is not Literary Fiction, nor is it Booker Prize material, but it is all the better for that! What most readers want is an interesting mystery, eccentric characters and some good old fashioned sleuthing and this novel has these in spades!

The story has two threads: the fate of ‘Polly’s Cake Shop’ when its owner sells up, and the identification and investigation of a body washed up on the beach.
Amateur sleuths and next door neighbours Jude and Carole have an interest in both; they frequent the cake shop and it is they who discover the body.

As a backdrop there is the colourful Fethering community, in the guise of its ordinary residents and workers and of course the self-serving local ‘worthies’, first among them Commodore Quintus Braithwaite and his wife Phoebe who set up a committee to rescue ‘Polly’s’ and run it as a community café.

This story includes all of the aspects of small town life from the clear ‘class’ divisions to the petty bickering and backstabbing that are just as endemic.

What results is a charming and intriguing page turner, which requires little from the reader apart from going along with the fun. Yes, some of the characters are caricatures and yes, the plot is a little unlikely, but I for one would pick this author up again for his easy reading and lack of violence (apart from the murder of course!), lack of gore, and most of all, no superhuman hero!

A good book doesn’t have to tax the reader – after all, most of us read for pleasure!!

Pashtpaws

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review

Another thoroughly enjoyable outing in Fethering. A must and welcome read for all fans of Carole and Jude as this instalment centres around a corpse in a café and we are treated to vivid descriptions of Fethering and that part of Sussex whilst accompanying Carole and Jude in their sleuthing, More please, Mr Brett!

Love to read fun, upbeat mysteries with no graphic violence, sex, or language? The Killing in the Cafe, the 17th installment in the Fethering series by Simon Brett is just that. Set in Britain, Brett weaves English charm into his cozy mysteries, and the characters are delightful, especially Jude and Carol, the unofficial amateur sleuthing team of the village.
In this book, Polly’s Cake Shop, which is almost an institution in Fethering, is going to close due to the owner selling it and moving away. The community takes over with an action committee and begins to run it with volunteers. An employee, who is a client of Jude’s healing business, thinks she saw a dead body in the cafe. However, the body disappeared and Carol and Jude later found it washed up on the beach. Jude’s client didn’t go to the police, who are not doing a very good job of finding the murderer and are calling it a suicide. Carol and Jude are amateur sleuths, and are determined to find the murderer, and that leads to lots of secrets being exposed in Fethering, as well as an unlikely murderer.
As are the previous books in the series, this mystery is well-written, humorous, and definitely English. It is absolutely charming and suitable for mystery lovers of all ages. Reading this book will inspire readers to pick up Brett’s previous novels for simple, entertaining stories that are very quick reads.