The Body on the Beach

Simon Brett gets great reviews and has more than one murder mystery series going. I decided to give him a try, and so checked out The Body on the Beach, the first in the Fethering mysteries.

Good things: he writes well, the setting is interesting (a self-satisfied village on the southern coast of England), the characters are diverse enough without being too weird. Such supporting cast as the Vice-Commodore and poisonous Winnie Norton are drawn with a spare deft hand.

Bad things: I didn't really like either of the lead characters. Carole is stiff and stodgy but starts to loosen up, newcomer Jude is breezy and freewheeling but surprisingly discreet about her past. Neither of the two roused my empathy, and after a while I got tired of them. I finished the book in case the ending was super-satisfying, but it wasn't. Not that it was bad. It just ended.

Maybe I'll try another series of his in a while. This one just doesn't appeal to me.