The Torso in the Town ~ Fethering #3 by Simon Brett

In Volume 3 of the Fethering Mystery series, our two sleuths Carole Seddon (proper and rather puritanical) and her next-door neighbor Jude (not-so-proper and free-flowing) are at a dinner party in the nearby town with some incredibly snobbish people (this is set in the early 2000s) when they discover the mummified torso of a woman.

Who could it be? Of course Jude and Carole are dying to know.

As usual, the plotting was deft and I loved the way in which the actual reasons for the murder (as well as the actual people engaged in it) are not discovered because the police stop bothering about the case once their chief suspect dies.

Those of you who have read the first two books of this series will know that Simon Brett enjoys teasing the reader about Jude. Until this volume, we had little idea of who she is, where she came from, whether she married or not, and what kind of work she engaged in. In THE TORSO IN THE TOWN, we learn that Jude is divorced and that she has not one, but two last names: Nichol and a Greek-sounding name beginning with an M. (As I experienced this as an audiobook, I don’t know how to spell it.) 

As the blurb notes, this book is not just a murder mystery. It is also a send-up of contemporary Britain. As a person who grew up in 1960s and 1970s Britain this surprised me, as the snobbishness, tribalism and fascination with the social pecking order struck me as very quaint indeed. I left Britain in 1982 and have not lived there for over 40 years. Although I have made many visits, I believed that our generation was more democratic than our forebears. So to hear some of these characters make offensive comments that used to trip off the lips of my grandmother and great-aunts seemed almost surreal. 

The other great thing about this volume was the way in which Simon Brett writes so empathically about women. One of my favorite scenes is when Jude is having lunch in a pub and eavesdropping on a couple of men. I loved the way in which Mr. Brett delineated how male laughter sounds to a woman, and how male bonding behavior can seem so repulsive.

So, even if you are not a great fan of murder mysteries, who might want to give this one a whirl. Especially if you are planning on visiting Britain in the near future. Five stars. 

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