Simon Brett has narrated 30 audiobooks on Listento.it by 2 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 15 ratings. The most-rated is The Body on the Beach.
The Body on the Beach
Summary
Very little disturbs the ordered calm of Fethering, a pleasingly self-contained retirement town on England's southern coast. Which is precisely why Carole Seddon, who has outlived both her husband and her career at the Home Office, has chosen to reside there. So the last thing Carole expects to encounter in Fethering is a new neighbour with but one name and an obviously colourful past. 'Jude' was not really Fethering...but neither was the body Carole found on the beach. A body, it has to be said, that has disappeared by the time the police arrive. Only Jude is ready to believe what her neighbour says she saw - and from that moment on, the two women are resolved to turn detectives.
©2000 Simon Brett (P)2001 Isis Publishing Ltd
The Liar in the Library
Summary
Having been booked to give a talk at Fethering Library, successful author Burton St Clair invites his old friend Jude to come along. Although they haven't met for 20 years, Jude is not surprised to find that St Clair hasn't changed, with his towering ego and somewhat shaky relationship with the truth. What Jude hadn't been suspecting, however, was that the evening would end in sudden, violent death. More worrying, from Jude's point of view, is the fact that the investigating police officers seem to be convinced that she herself was responsible for the crime. With the evidence stacking up against her, Jude enlists the help of her neighbour Carole.
©2017 Simon Brett (P)2018 Isis Publishing Ltd
The Hanging in the Hotel
Summary
The Hopwicke Country House Hotel, owned by Jude's glamorous friend Suzy Longthorne, is to host an event for the all-male society the Pillars of Sussex. On the night, Jude helps Suzy serve dinner, and in the early hours of the morning they watch with relief as the guests drag themselves to their beds. The next morning, one young solicitor does not come down for breakfast. Jude heads for Nigel Ackford's room, presuming he is feeling the effects of the night before. It soon becomes apparent, however, that Nigel has been spared his hangover, for Jude finds him hanging from the beams of his four-poster bed. And she is convinced that this is not suicide....
©2004 Simon Brett (P)2019 Isis Publishing Ltd
The Strangling on the Stage
Summary
When Jude agrees to lend her vintage chaise longue for the local Amateur Dramatic Society’s production of George Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple, little does she realise she’ll end up in a starring role. It’s an ambitious play, culminating in a dramatic execution scene: a scene that’s played for real when one of the leading actors is found hanging from the specially constructed stage gallows during rehearsals. A tragic accident - or something more sinister? As Jude and her neighbour Carole know only too well, the Smalting AmDram Society is a hotbed of seething resentments, clashing egos, overreaching ambition and thwarted passion - but are any of the members emotionally-charged enough to commit murder? Carole and Jude make it their business to find out.
©2013 Simon Brett (P)2014 Isis Publishing Ltd
The Dead Side of the Mike
Summary
When Andrea Gower’s body is discovered in an editing suite, with gashes in her wrists and two razor blades nearby, the cause of death seems obvious, with the words she spoke only hours before taking on a completely different meaning.... Working as a radio actor for the BBC was all new to Charles Paris: a new kind of work, a new jargon, and a lot of new faces - some of them quite pretty. But Charles, amateur sleuth and fond of the odd tipple, can’t get the dead girl out of his mind. And when the trail leads him to New York and back, by way of a DJ, an American conman, and another dead body, it becomes only a matter of time before the clues start falling into place....
©1980 Simon Brett (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
A Reconstructed Corpse
Summary
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. As the programme’s ratings soar, so the egos behind the scene become ever more inflated, and Charles ever more determined to solve the mystery.
©1993 Simon Brett (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Charles Paris: What Bloody Man is That?
Summary
Charles Paris is on his way up again, career-wise. No longer ‘resting’ or playing a corpse in a cupboard, he finds himself doubling almost every role in a provincial production of the play dreaded by superstitious theatrefolk: Macbeth. The three principals could hardly be more assorted: Macbeth is played by TV gameshow personality George Birkitt; Lady Macbeth comes straight from Stratford, an intense young woman with Method in her madness; and Duncan is that notorious ham, Warnock Belvedere, who feels that he’s in the great tradition of actor-managers. With such a cast, sparks are bound to fly, and it’s not long before Charles Paris finds himself in the familiar role of private eye when death strikes in the night...
©1987 Simon Brett (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
The Torso in the Town
Summary
Amateur sleuths Jude and Carole take on their third case when a terrible discovery is made in the cellar of a grand old house. Grant and Kim Roxby had hoped that their first dinner party at Pelling House would make an impression with their new neighbours. And the next day it's certainly the talk of the town. For their guests - including the couple's old friend Jude - had been enjoying a pleasant meal before they were rudely interrupted by a gruesome discovery. A human torso hidden in the cellar. Jude races home to Fethering and her friend Carole with the news. And soon the pair are back in Fedborough, questioning the locals.
©2002 Simon Brett (P)2002 Isis Publishing Ltd
The Corpse on the Court
Summary
Jude's life has been turned upside-down thanks her new man, Piers Targett, who's keen to get her involved in his hobby – or obsession – of Real Tennis. But when one of Piers' friends dies on the court in suspicious circumstances, Jude finds herself caught up in the police investigation. Meanwhile, Jude's neighbour Carole is trying to identify the human remains known locally as the “Lady in the Lake”. As the two investigations become intertwined, Carole and Jude's efforts to find the truth look set to lead to more murders.
©2012 Simon Brett (P)2013 Isis Publishing Ltd
The Killer in the Choir
Summary
Although she hadn’t known Leonard Mallett very well, nor liked him particularly, Carole Seddon feels duty bound to attend her fellow committee member’s funeral. As she suspected, the hymns, readings, and sermon are all 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, as many Fethering residents believe? Deciding to get to the heart of the matter, Carole’s neighbor, Jude, joins the new community choir - and discovers that amidst the clashing egos and petty resentments lurk some decidedly false notes.
©2019 2019 by Dreamscape Media, LLC (P)2019 2019 by Dreamscape Media, LLC
Murder in the Museum
Summary
The Elizabethan house of Bracketts is about to be turned into a museum. It had once been the home of the celebrated poet Esmund Chadleigh and is to become a shrine to his life and poetry - but the transition is far from smooth. Carole Seddon had been reluctant to join the Bracketts Board, and now she realises that she should have listened to her instinct. The simmering tension between the board members is about to boil over. A human skeleton is discovered in the kitchen garden, and before too long there is a second body, not yet cold. Murder is no longer just a dreadful possibility but a certainty.
©2003 Simon Brett (P)2004 Isis Publishing Ltd
Death on the Downs
Summary
It wasn't the rain that upset Carole Seddon during her walk on the West Sussex Downs. It wasn't the dilapidated barn in which she was forced to seek shelter. No, what upset her most was the human skeleton she discovered there.... So begins the second investigation for straitlaced Carole and her more laid-back neighbour Jude. This time their enquiries take them away from Fethering to the small download hamlet of Weldsham, where gossips quickly identify the corpse as Tamsin Lutteridge, a young woman who had disappeared from the village months before....
©2001 Simon Brett (P)2001 Isis Publishing Ltd
Bones Under the Beach Hut
Summary
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.
Meanwhile, Kelvin Southwest, caretaker of Smalting’s beach huts, seems to be hiding a dark secret while Reginald Flowers, pompous president of the Smalting Beach Hut Association, becomes increasingly defensive about his own history. When the bones under the beach hut are identified, the ghosts of the past are painfully reawakened, and long-hidden secrets begin to surface.
©2011 Simon Brett (P)2011 Isis Publishing Ltd
A Series of Murders
Summary
Charles Paris is in clover. He has been contracted for three whole months to play brainless bobby Sergeant Clump, foil to the charismatic amateur sleuth, Stanislas Braid, in a TV series of that name. Recourse to the whiskey bottle is still needed, however, to get him through a day’s filming - one made all the more arduous by the pompous posturings of the show’s star, and the constant outraged interruptions of the ancient author whose detective novels are being adapted.
Indeed, there is plenty of friction about. But when a particularly unpromising actress is killed, crushed to death, there seems no reason to doubt it was an accident - except in Charles’s mind. Leaving behind a trail of broken resolutions and empty bottles, Charles indulges in some sleuthing of his own. He may lack the panache of the suave Stanislas Braid, but unlike the great detective, the danger Paris encounters is only too real.
©1989 Simon Brett (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Blood at the Bookies
Summary
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. As they question the local residents, Carole finds an unexpected friend in an inveterate gambler, and Jude finds herself in potential trouble with a lecherous and charming drama professor.
©2008 Simon Brett (P)2008 Isis Publishing Ltd
The Poisoning in the Pub
Summary
Fethering residents Jude and Carole get more than they bargained for when a meal in their local pub leaves everyone with food poisoning. The landlord is horrified, and when a series of disasters start to befall his business it looks like it could be the end of the road for the Crown and Anchor.
The two amateur detectives wonder if it might just be more than a run of bad luck. When a young man is found in the kitchen with a knife through his heart, Carole and Jude swing into action.
There's a killer on the loose, and our lady sleuths need to uncover who it is before it's last orders for the pub - and themselves.
©2009 Simon Brett (P)2009 Isis Publishing Ltd
Charles Paris: A Doubtful Death
Summary
Bill Nighy returns as the loveably louche actor-cum-amateur detective Charles Paris. Charles Paris is in Oxford, appearing in a re-imagining of Hamlet by a high-concept drama company. No fan of immersive theatre, he’s unimpressed with the director’s vision and less than thrilled to be rehearsing alongside puppeteers and mime artists. But he soon finds himself back on familiar territory when the actress playing Ophelia goes missing, only to turn up dead. Did she take her own life, or was there foul play? As he amasses a list of suspects who might have wished her harm, Charles takes on the mantle of detective once more to decide if this is to be or not to be a murder case.... Scripted for radio by Jeremy Front from a story by Simon Brett, A Doubtful Death stars Bill Nighy (Emma, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) as Charles Paris, with Suzanne Burden as Frances and Jon Glover as Maurice. Also included is an exclusive 18-minute afterword in which Jeremy Front discusses his experience of adapting an unproduced screenplay, reveals what it’s like to work with recurring characters and actors and explains the mechanics of recording for radio. Simon Brett OBE has written 19 Charles Paris novels as well as many other detective novels. Jeremy Front is a dramatist and comedic writer; he has won awards for his adaptation of Sword of Honour and co-writes and stars in the series Incredible Women with his sister, Rebecca. Credits: Written by Jeremy Front. From a story by Simon Brett. Produced and directed by Sally Avens. Production Coordinator: Cynthia Fagan. Studio Managers: Anne Bunting, Keith Graham and Jenni Burnett. Interview produced by Ania Duggan and Roshni Radia. First broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 22 May-12 June 2020.
©2020 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2020 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd
Star Trap
Summary
Christopher Milton is one of TV’s brightest stars and the natural choice to play the lead in Lumpkin!, the musical version of She Stoops to Conquer. His is a ruthless, egomaniacal talent, guaranteed to turn his co-cast’s rehearsals into nail-biting hell. Charles Paris suspects him of harbouring at least one dark secret from years past. And then the ‘accidents’ begin.
Soon it is plain that someone will stop at nothing in order to sabotage the show for their own ends.
©1977 Simon Brett (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Not Dead, Only Resting
Summary
Charles Paris is, as ever, waiting for a phone call from his agent, and is driven to painting and decorating to make ends meet.
A rare evening out at a high-profile restaurant among stars of stage and screen promises a break in the depressing routine. But when the restaurant’s handsome, temperamental chef is brutally murdered, Charles finds himself drawn into the ensuing investigation.
At first it seems an open and shut case: the chef’s partner is in France within hours of having a spectacular quarrel with him over a pretty youth. Yet as Charles’ inquiries take him into the feuds and jealousies of his own profession, both murder and motive are anything but obvious.
©1984 Simon Brett (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Death Under the Dryer
Summary
When Carole goes for a trim at Connie’s Clip Joint, she doesn’t expect to find herself at the scene of a murder. But in the back room, strangled by the lead of a hairdryer, sits Connie’s young assistant Kyra.
Carole and her sleuthing friend Jude are soon enjoying some tactical snooping, and it seems that Fethering’s fingers are pointing firmly at Kyra’s boyfriend Nathan, who has disappeared. As our discreet lady detectives decide there are only so many haircuts they can have for the sake of neighbourhood crime-solving, they also realise that this is no cut-and-dried case....
©2007 Simon Brett (P)2007 Isis Publishing Ltd