Simon Brett Books in Order

Actor Charles Paris investigates the deaths of theatrical tycoon Marius Steen and blackmailer Bill Sweet. Adopting disguises, including that of a Scotland Yard detective, draws him into a world of compromising photographs, show-business secrets, and increasingly dangerous performances.

Charles Paris takes his one-man show to the Edinburgh Festival and becomes entangled in a murder investigation. A fading pop star’s death, a bomb scare, and theatrical rivalries complicate a week already filled with performances, drink, and romantic distractions.

Charles Paris joins a musical whose rehearsals are disrupted by a pianist’s shooting and an actor’s suspicious fall. Investigating the backstage mishaps leads him toward the show’s difficult star, raising an awkward question: why sabotage a production built around himself?

Charles Paris becomes involved with an amateur theatre company when his friend Hugo’s wife is murdered. With Hugo accused of the crime, Charles investigates rivalries and backstage relationships, hoping to uncover the truth behind a carefully constructed alibi.

On a seaside holiday with his estranged wife, Charles Paris watches a rising comedian collapse after taking hold of his guitar and microphone. The apparently electrifying accident gives the actor a fresh mystery among the entertainers and their competing interests.

After recording a BBC radio drama, Charles Paris learns that studio manager Andrea Gower has been found dead in an editing suite. A second death undermines the apparent suicide and leads him into a dangerous investigation of institutional secrets and scandal.

A minor role in a sitcom promises Charles Paris steady work, until disturbing accidents and deaths disrupt the production. The cast’s peculiar behavior draws the actor into another investigation, as his television comedy becomes a much darker drama.

Charles Paris is demoted to understudy when a television star takes over a new play. The replacement is shot on opening night, leaving Charles to investigate the resentful cast and clear a fellow actor who had openly refused to accept the change.

Charles Paris reaches a professional low playing a corpse in an unsuccessful provincial thriller. Nearly becoming a real victim is worse: mounting backstage accidents suggest sabotage, and he must find the person turning the theatre company’s troubles into murder.

Passed over for promotion, executive Graham Marshall lashes out and discovers that getting away with a killing gives him an unsettling sense of power. Career resentment and domestic frustration fuel a darkly comic descent into increasingly calculated violence.

Taking work as a house painter, unemployed actor Charles Paris discovers the mutilated body of a fashionable restaurant’s chef. The victim’s missing partner seems the obvious suspect, but Charles finds enough enemies and inconsistencies to launch his own investigation.

Twelve short stories explore murder in forms ranging from bizarre comedy to disturbing cruelty. The collection includes an appearance by actor and amateur detective Charles Paris, bringing Brett’s theatrical sleuth into a series of compact criminal puzzles.

Charles Paris appears on a television quiz show, hoping for publicity after months without work. When the host dies after drinking poisoned gin, Charles investigates the studio’s rivalries and hidden grievances to help clear a young assistant accused of murder.

Twelve stories combine psychological suspense with dark humor and unusual crimes. A practical joker meets a fatal custard pie, an elderly handyman follows a sinister logic, and a former hotel porter plots against his wealthy wife with unexpected consequences.

Wealthy widow Melita Pargeter unsettles the routines of a respectable seaside hotel for retirees. When a resident dies at the foot of the stairs and valuable jewelry goes missing, she investigates the secrets behind the guests’ carefully maintained appearances.

Teacher Madeleine Severn enjoys her students’ admiration until one boy’s attachment becomes dangerously intense. Romantic entanglements involving the school principal and Madeleine’s niece add to a web of passion, deception, and obsession that moves toward murder.

When a leading British rock star disappears, the Three Detectives take up the case. The young investigators must turn an alarming disappearance from the entertainment world into clues that can lead them to the missing performer.

Widow Sarah France shares a house with her interfering mother Eleanor and her independent-minded teenage daughter Clare. After Henry’s death, the three generations struggle with changing relationships, family demands, and Sarah’s attempts to build a life of her own.

Three young detectives suspect that someone plans to steal medieval suits of armor from Scalethorpe Castle. Their investigation turns the castle’s historic collection into the center of a mystery, challenging them to uncover the threat before the armor disappears.

Charles Paris returns to Shakespeare in a troubled provincial production of Macbeth, juggling numerous parts and a difficult cast. After a disastrous rehearsal, he finds an unpopular actor dead inside the locked theatre and must investigate a very real theatrical curse.

Mrs Pargeter moves to a prosperous housing development and discovers that its polished social ambitions conceal disturbing secrets. Unease about the previous residents of her new home leads the resourceful widow to investigate a disappearance and the possibility of murder.

Charles Paris finds steady work as a policeman in a television detective series. Discovering an actress dead in the prop room disrupts the production, and further supposed accidents convince him to investigate the real crimes unfolding behind the fictional ones.

A comic account of Geraldine’s home life and her own novel becomes a parody of Booker Prize winners. Brett imitates literary styles while satirizing the behavior of authors, publishers, agents, and committees in the world of prestigious fiction.

Mrs Pargeter accompanies grieving friend Joyce Dover on a package holiday to Corfu. When Joyce is found dead in what appears to be suicide, Mrs Pargeter suspects murder and follows clues involving a suspicious bottle and her friend’s late husband.

Charles Paris plays a forklift driver in a company’s promotional video, only for a secretary to be found crushed by the machine. Suspicion falls on Charles, forcing him to examine the corporation’s secrets and determine whether the apparent accident was murder.

Edited by Liza Cody and Michael Z. Lewin, this Crime Writers’ Association anthology gathers twenty-six mystery stories. Contributors including Ruth Rendell, Sara Paretsky, Antonia Fraser, Dick Francis, and Simon Brett offer investigations, psychological suspense, humor, and unexpected criminal puzzles.

A baby narrates the first year of life as an elaborate campaign to disrupt the adults responsible for its care. Diary entries turn feeding, crying, early milestones, and parental anxiety into a mischievous comic view of family life.

Mrs Pargeter joins a friend at a health spa and enjoys privileges that undermine its austere slimming regime. When a painfully thin guest dies and her body disappears, the widow investigates connections between the diet business and an old criminal enterprise.

Retired detective Jack Tarrant and his girlfriend Maria spend Christmas at snowbound Puzzel Manor. A corpse and a series of fiendish word and logic puzzles turn their holiday into a hunt for a murderer, with clues offered for readers to solve too.

Charles Paris portrays missing property developer Martin Earnshaw in a television crime reconstruction. When body parts begin turning up, his role expands, and he starts questioning the program’s sensational coverage and the motives of those closest to the missing man.

The calculating baby becomes a toddler with fresh opportunities to torment its parents. Diary entries follow a second year of tantrums, potty training, food fads, and mysterious rashes, turning ordinary developmental milestones into comic struggles for control of the household.

A struggling repertory company rehearses Boris Smolensky’s murder mystery while its actors pursue their own egos and rivalries. When Boris’s wife Renee is killed onstage, the production becomes a comic whodunit in which theatrical incompetence obscures the real culprit.

Mr Quigley keeps Frinsley Village Hall running smoothly, balancing the bookings that sustain community life. When Keith plans to sell the site and attacks its caretaker’s position, he discovers that the apparently mild Quigley is far more resourceful than expected.

Television producer Laura Fisher decides to have a child before turning thirty, then discovers a shocking truth about the father. Twenty years later, accusations against her son force her to confront a family history of violence and murder she hoped to escape.

A body in the wine cellar halts construction of Mrs Pargeter’s dream country home. Her builder, Concrete Jacket, is arrested, but she believes her late husband’s old associate has been framed and recruits his colorful former colleagues to expose the culprit.

Playing Sir Toby Belch and living with Frances again, Charles Paris finally feels his fortunes improving. Then illness removes the director of Twelfth Night, an experimental replacement takes charge, and further poisoning incidents suggest someone is targeting the company.

Charles Paris combines a touring farce with audiobook work at a recording studio. When producer Mark Lear is found dead in a locked room after threatening a revealing book about the BBC, Charles investigates whether old grievances have become murderous.

Little Sod’s control of the household is threatened by the arrival of a new baby. The toddler’s diary turns sibling rivalry into a campaign against the newcomer, bringing further trouble for parents already familiar with the child’s talent for creating chaos.

Ten stories explore the deadly sins through crime, rivalry, and unexpected reversals. Aging angry young men turn their bitterness toward murder, while a supposedly rediscovered crime manuscript raises questions of authenticity and changing attitudes in the literary world.

Mrs Pargeter agrees to help return a widow’s collection of stolen paintings to their rightful owners. Her late husband’s former associates assemble for the reverse heist, but someone steals the paintings first, forcing them to recover the art while evading police attention.

Detective Inspector Bruton questions actress Celia Wallis after her husband's murder, with suspicion falling on the journalist in her bed. This stage thriller then moves back before the killing, challenging the assumptions established by the initial investigation.

This pantomime relocates Little Red Riding Hood's story to Siberia before the Revolution. An evil fox condemns the country to endless winter and sends a wolf against the Boronski family, combining fairy-tale danger with theatrical comedy.

Princess Aurora falls under the evil Carabosse's curse in this pantomime version of Sleeping Beauty. A hundred-year sleep, Prince Florizel, and a riddle involving the audience form the fairy-tale obstacles around which the stage adventure unfolds.

This collection mixes a country-house whodunit in verse with literary parodies and invented missing documents. Brett imagines crime writing by authors such as Jane Austen and T. S. Eliot, turning familiar literary voices into playful mystery fragments.

An accessible mystery anthology for learners, this volume adapts suspense stories by several crime writers, including Simon Brett and Sara Paretsky. The cases are short, varied, and built around the many reasons people turn to murder.

Retired civil servant Carole Seddon finds a corpse on Fethering beach, only for it to disappear before the police arrive. With her unconventional new neighbour Jude, she investigates two linked deaths and discovers that quiet village life is not so quiet.

Seeking shelter from a storm on the South Downs, Carole finds bags of human bones in an abandoned barn. She and Jude follow a trail of missing women, local gossip and old secrets through the nearby village of Weldisham.

Dumped by Roddy for being shallow and environmentally indifferent, Miggy tries to make herself a comforting cup of tea. This short monologue follows her account of the breakup and the unexpectedly troubling implications of boiling the kettle.

A dinner party in fashionable Fedborough ends when a teenage boy finds a dismembered body in the cellar. Jude draws Carole into the investigation, where the histories of a grand house and its former owners prove dangerously tangled.

Carole joins the trust preserving Bracketts, the former home of poet Esmond Chadleigh, just as a skeleton is unearthed on the grounds. A fresh murder and a fight over the writer's legacy send Carole and Jude digging into the past.

This illustrated humor book collects oxymorons, exploring expressions that place apparently contradictory ideas together. Organized around areas including popular culture, politics, and business, it uses verbal clashes to poke fun at language and everyday assumptions.

This short humor book offers quick, quirky tips for fathers adjusting to life with a baby. Nappies, nighttime demands, and everyday parenting problems provide material for advice aimed at both newcomers and dads who have done it before.

Jude helps out at a struggling country-house hotel when a guest at a men's club dinner is found hanged. The police see suicide, but Jude and Carole find threats, conflicting stories and plenty of reasons to suspect murder.

Childbirth is over, but burping, tantrums, and family demands are only beginning. This compact humor book combines definitions, tips, and one-liners about parenting, offering mothers a lighthearted companion to the practical frustrations of caring for a baby.

Published for the Detection Club’s seventy-fifth anniversary, this collection offers twelve original crime stories by members including P. D. James, Colin Dexter, Reginald Hill, and Robert Goddard. Editor Simon Brett also contributes a history of the long-running mystery-writing society.

Carole's son Stephen is preparing to marry Gaby Martin when trouble from Gaby's family's past comes sharply into view. After a death unsettles the wedding plans, Carole and Jude investigate a case where family loyalties keep the truth hidden.

A new grandchild brings joy and the likelihood of unexpected babysitting requests. This compact humor book explores renewed responsibilities, play dates, and the truths of grandparenting through quirky tips and one-liners for people returning to baby care.

Imagined discarded drafts reveal the mistakes and abandoned ideas of celebrated writers, artists, and historical figures. From King Arthur's furniture plans to alternative literary scenes, these comic fragments turn familiar cultural achievements into exercises in human fallibility.

Approaching sixty, television newsreader Bill Stratton is stunned when his wife leaves him after nearly forty years of marriage. His modest celebrity opens unexpected doors to dating, forcing him to navigate a belated and bewildering romantic education.

While visiting Long Bamber Stables to treat a horse, Jude finds co-owner Walter Fleet stabbed to death. Carole and Jude uncover jealousies, affairs and rivalries among the horse community, where protecting a reputation can become a deadly business.

A simple haircut turns grim when Carole finds a salon assistant dead in the back room. With the victim's boyfriend missing and his peculiar family guarding their secrets, Carole and Jude use an unlikely board game to search for the killer.

Jude discovers the body of Polish immigrant Tadeusz Jankowski at Fethering's betting shop. Few people know why he came to town, so she and Carole investigate his past, the local college and a crowded field of possible motives.

Valerie Trevelyan dies from a painkiller overdose, with suspicious bruising raising questions about murder. In this stage mystery, detectives question her mutually hostile sons and their father, uncovering family secrets as financial motives point towards a possible culprit.

A body in Tawcester Towers's library and a plot against a visiting ex-king's daughter draw aristocratic siblings Blotto and Twinks into danger. Blotto's courage needs his sister's intelligence as they pursue a killer and a kidnapping threat.

Food poisoning and a string of mishaps threaten the Crown and Anchor, Carole and Jude's favourite pub. When a young man is stabbed in its kitchen, the neighbours suspect someone is trying to destroy the business for good.

Retired academics Robert and Hilary Travers have exchanged international careers for a small Cotswolds cottage. This play explores their marriage in old age, as Robert's stories meet an audience of one who has heard them all before.

When their house-party hostess is murdered, Blotto and Twinks's chauffeur Corky becomes the convenient suspect. Determined to clear him, the siblings pursue the real killer through an investigation that reaches far beyond the aristocratic gathering.

Christmas shopping is the last thing Carole enjoys, until a local store burns down and a woman's body is found inside. The gunshot victim had secrets and enemies, leaving Carole and Jude to sort through lies beneath the festive surface.

Two valuable portraits disappear from Tawcester Towers, prompting Blotto and Twinks to investigate international art thieves. Their search takes them to Paris and the French Riviera, where a criminal mastermind has designs on more than the family collection.

Carole's new beach hut at the resort of Smaltings comes with an unwelcome surprise: human remains beneath the floorboards. She and Jude probe old disappearances, a missing boyfriend and the secrets guarded by the beach-hut community.

A private view for controversial artist Denzil Willoughby ends in sudden death after several public confrontations. The police accept suicide, but Carole and Jude think otherwise, and begin tracing the resentments behind an apparently simple tragedy.

Financial trouble prompts the Dowager Duchess to arrange Blotto's marriage to a wealthy American heiress. Accompanied by Twinks and Corky, he travels to Prohibition-era Chicago, where the prospective bride's family is entangled in a bootlegging operation.

Jude is drawn into the obsessive world of Real Tennis by her new partner Piers, then a player dies in suspicious circumstances. Carole is also trying to identify the Lady in the Lake, and the two investigations soon collide.

Charles Paris lands two small roles in a Hamlet production led by television talent-show stars. After a rehearsal injury and an opening-night death, the actor investigates whether backstage tensions have escalated into a connected series of attacks.

While helping value attic possessions, Blotto opens an Egyptian sarcophagus despite its warning of a curse. A succession of disasters at Tawcester Towers sends him, Twinks, and Corky looking for a way to end the apparent punishment.

Acting in an Eastbourne pantomime, Charles Paris befriends its troubled American sitcom star and gets drawn into his complicated affairs. Finding a murdered cast member beneath the pier brings press attention, chaotic rehearsals, and suspicion directed at Charles.

Jude lends a chaise longue to Fethering's amateur dramatics society, only for its rehearsal gallows to become the scene of a real death. Carole and Jude must decide whether a staged execution was a terrible accident or carefully planned murder.

Russian relatives arrive at Tawcester Towers with debts and unwelcome demands, prompting Blotto and Twinks to seek a way home for them. Their ambitious restoration scheme draws the siblings into Berlin's world of spies and political conspiracies.

A name in her late husband's little black book brings Mrs Pargeter to Sir Normington Winthrop's funeral. A stranger's threatening intervention makes her determined to uncover their connection, leading towards blackmail, murder, and a kidnapped vicar.

When Polly's Cake Shop faces closure, Jude joins a committee trying to save it as a community venture. Petty quarrels turn serious after she and Carole find a body on the beach with a troubling connection to the café.

Carole reluctantly joins Jude on a Turkish holiday at the villa of property developer Barney Willingdon. Threats, an attack and a body in an ancient tomb reveal that their host has enemies, and that his past may hold the key.

Blotto accepts an invitation to play cricket in Hollywood, while his mother hopes Twinks will find a wealthy husband. News that starlet Mimsy La Pim has been kidnapped turns the California visit into a personal rescue mission.

At a charity reception, Mrs Pargeter meets a woman claiming to be her late husband's sister. The encounter opens uncomfortable questions about his past, leading to a body in Epping Forest and danger on a trip to Greece.

Charles Paris wins a role as a monk in a West End play but drinks himself into another personal disaster. Waking to find a body at the theatre, he compounds his difficulties by lying to the police.

A talk by bestselling author Burton St Clair at Fethering Library ends in violent death. Jude, his old friend and one of the last people to see him alive, becomes the police's prime suspect, so Carole helps clear her name.

Blotto enters a European road race to win money for repairs at Tawcester Towers. Food poisoning forces him and Corky to recruit another mechanic, complicating their attempt to beat formidable rivals on the route to Rome.

A theatre outing turns sinister when Blotto's friend Whiffler is abducted after a revue. Calling on Twinks for help, Blotto enters London's entertainment world and criminal underworld, where the search exposes the siblings to further kidnapping danger.

At Leonard Mallett's funeral, his daughter publicly accuses his widow of murder. Jude joins Fethering's community choir to investigate, while Carole follows the gossip, resentments and false notes that point toward a second, more urgent crime.

Professor Derrick Rounsevell discovers strange erasures in an inherited eighteenth-century encyclopedia and investigates with his wife Harriett. The book’s history reveals manipulation, theft, and a century-old murder scheme, while their inquiries expose secrets he hoped she would never learn.

Professional declutterer Ellen Curtis discovers a young woman's corpse in a crowded flat. Suspicion falls on the homeowner's fugitive son, but a connection to Ellen's own past prompts her to investigate rather than accept the obvious explanation.

Ellen Curtis is asked to declutter Ingrid Richards's flat, then learns Ingrid has died in a fire. Police suspect an accident, but her daughter's resentment and the dead woman's surprising past make Ellen question what really happened.

A cricket tour takes Blotto and Twinks towards India, where their mother hopes for a wealthy marriage. Unbeknown to them, a jewel thief has joined the entourage with plans to steal a diamond belonging to a maharajah.

After Carole's treasured Renault is vandalised, threatening messages make it clear she has been singled out. Then a man is crushed by a gearbox at the local garage, and Carole and Jude suspect both incidents are part of a planned crime.

Blotto is appalled to learn that a nearby earl charges guests for events at his stately home. He and Twinks investigate the arrangement, uncovering Aristotours, an organization connecting impoverished aristocrats with paying visitors seeking a taste of privilege.

While redecorating her cottage, Jude finds a woman's handbag hidden behind a wall panel in a Victorian building. Its owner vanished twenty years earlier, sending Jude and Carole into a cold case filled with deception, buried history and murder.

Declutterer Ellen Curtis finds elderly client Cedric dead and becomes a suspect when police discover possible poisoning. Her missing employee, a hostile rival, and family crises complicate her efforts to identify a killer and restore order to her own life.

A cracked patio slab interrupts Mrs Pargeter’s morning coffee and exposes a skull with a bullet hole. She and her friends investigate before suspicion falls on her late husband and the business dealings she prefers not to examine.

Ellen Curtis arrives to organize an aging television presenter’s study and finds him dead after his birthday party. His wife disputes the apparent suicide, prompting Ellen to uncover old grievances and investigate whether the death hides a murder.

Blotto travels to a Swiss village to compete in a dangerous race while Twinks infiltrates a sinister finishing school. Sabotage, frozen skiers awaiting resurrection, and a count’s bizarre weapons plot turn their separate errands into another perilous adventure.

Jude attends the closing night of a play based on a classic television sitcom and finds its leading man dead in his dressing room. With an ensemble of old castmates and old grudges, she and Carole investigate the theatre's backstage tensions.