Mrs, presumed dead

This is the second book in Brett's series about Mrs Pargetter ,a widow in her late 60's ,whose former husband was a successful burglar, a fact which proves useful when she applies her talents on the right side of the law .

The action mostly takes place in the affluent housing development of Smithy's Loam , an area of predominatly middle aged ,white residents .Mrs Pargetter moves into a house there .The houses are new and well maintained ,even if lacking any intellectual furbisments , Mrs P observes there is a distinct lack of books or other signs of intellectual cultivation

The reader has learned in chapter one that a murder has taken place -a woman is strangled with a cricket club tie .Mrs P is an active woman with a great deal of curiosity and she soon begins to detact all is not well in leafy suburbia ; the woman whose recently vacated home Mrs P now lives in ,has simply vanished and the woman's husband has not taken a new post in the North as rumoured but is instead a derelict sleeping rough in London .The missing woman was also a target for a religious cult and was on the verge of joining them ,in the process handing over a large sum of money to them .

She uses her criminal contacts to break into a warehouse where the possessions of Thersa ,the previous resident ,are stored and discovers her body in a freezer .

Mrs P sets out to solve the murder being convinced the culprit is one of the residents of Smithy's Loam ,most likely one of the women and it bcomes clear they all have persuasive motives for the crime no to mention secrets they are hiding from others ,secrtes about their origins or husbands or secret affairs .

The book is well and smoothly plotted but as is often the case with Brett the detection is often subordinate to the social comedy .The book isa soft centred satire at times as distinct from a novel of crime and detection with a mild satiric gaze being directed at social pretnesiousnesss at th thinly disguised racism of the estatae rsidents .Secrtes fester behind the respectable facade of suburbia and drug taking is rife .The facts of social division are faced head on and the passages of life among the London homelss are powerful ;people are a job -loss away from being derlicts and non-persons .The problem is that -perhaps because of his background in TV entertainment -Brett rarely follows up on his points and his book stay at the level of polished divertissements .They are good of their kind -light mysteries which are minor pleasures but not quite top echelon

People whose taste runs to the cozy will find the book and its series companions very much to their liking .Others will be less delighted in them