Death Under The Dryer
Fethering Mystery #8

by Simon Brett

Carole Seddon, retired from the Home Office to the seaside retirement town of Fethering, is in need of a new hairdresser. Her last one has been killed in a motorbike accident, so she reluctantly turns to the local salon called Connie’s Clip Joint. Proprietor Connie arrives late to open up, grumbling about her assistant, Kyra, who was supposed to do this. Kyra is already in the salon – but she is dead, strangled with the hairdryer flex. It is up to Carole and neighbor Jude to find out whodunit and prevent any more deaths.

This is a very polished work by a whodunit writer with a lot of titles behind him, as well as TV scripts, and it shows. Plenty of human interest and humor rub shoulders with a tortuous plot and more red herrings than a well-stocked fishmongers. It has an engaging beginning, a middle with the necessary (but too often missing in many books) developments, and a satisfactory conclusion. It is also the eighth book in the series, but for once there was not too much sense of it being part of a serial, just another adventure – a real rarity! I intend now to go back and read the others (which start with The Body on the Beach.) Happily I did not put the book down feeling that, because I had started late in the series, I couldn’t enjoy or follow this tale. There are some wonderful satirical portraits in here – the close-knit Locke clan are true originals – and a great sense of place. English cozies might not be as thick on the ground as US ones, but here is one series well worth hunting down.

Reviews of other titles in this series

The Hanging in the Hotel #5
The Witness at the Wedding #6
The Stabbing in the Stables #7
Death Under the Dryer #8
Blood at the Bookies #9
The Poisoning in the Pub # 10
The Shooting in the Shop # 11
Bones Under the Beach Hut # 12
Liar in the Library #18