Simon Brett Books in Order

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.