Showing results by narrator "Simon Brett" in All Categories

Carole Seddon's son is soon to be married to Gaby. But Marie and Harold Martin seem desperate to keep plans for their daughter's big day as low-key as possible. After a quiet engagement party, Harold disappears...only to be found dead the next day in a burnt out car in Epping Forest. Carole discovers that the Martins are hiding secrets that can be traced back 30 years, to the murder of Marie's best friend. Now the girl's killer has been released from prison and is back in his old stomping ground.

The Hopwicke Country House Hotel, owned by Jude's glamorous friend Suzy Longthorne, is to host an event for the all-male society the Pillars of Sussex. On the night, Jude helps Suzy serve dinner, and in the early hours of the morning they watch with relief as the guests drag themselves to their beds. The next morning, one young solicitor does not come down for breakfast. Jude heads for Nigel Ackford's room, presuming he is feeling the effects of the night before. It soon becomes apparent, however, that Nigel has been spared his hangover....

For Mrs Pargeter, it is a matter of principle that she should complete any of her late husband's unfinished business. Amongst his many bequests, perhaps the most valuable is his little black book, in which he listed all the people who ever worked for him, with details of their particular skill sets. This means that whenever Mrs P has a crime to solve, she can readily contact someone with the relevant expertise.

The Elizabethan house of Bracketts is about to be turned into a museum. It had once been the home of the celebrated poet Esmund Chadleigh and is to become a shrine to his life and poetry - but the transition is far from smooth. Carole Seddon had been reluctant to join the Bracketts Board, and now she realises that she should have listened to her instinct. The simmering tension between the board members is about to boil over. A human skeleton is discovered in the kitchen garden, and before too long there is a second body, not yet cold.

Jude's life has been turned upside-down thanks her new man, Piers Targett, who's keen to get her involved in his hobby – or obsession – of Real Tennis. But when one of Piers' friends dies on the court in suspicious circumstances, Jude finds herself caught up in the police investigation. Meanwhile, Jude's neighbour Carole is trying to identify the human remains known locally as the “Lady in the Lake”.

Having been booked to give a talk at Fethering Library, successful author Burton St Clair invites his old friend Jude to come along. Although they haven't met for 20 years, Jude is not surprised to find that St Clair hasn't changed, with his towering ego and somewhat shaky relationship with the truth. What Jude hadn't been suspecting, however, was that the evening would end in sudden, violent death. More worrying, from Jude's point of view, is the fact that the investigating police officers seem to be convinced that she herself was responsible for the crime. With the evidence stacking up against her, Jude enlists the help of her neighbour Carole.

The affluent seaside resort of Smalting is unaccustomed to crime. So when human remains are found beneath the floorboards of a beach hut, the community is awash with suspicion. Amateur sleuths Carole Seddon and best friend Jude are drawn into the mystery, and their suspicion quickly falls on attractive Philly Rose, a young Londoner newly arrived in the area, whose boyfriend has recently vanished.

Jude has never been averse to a bit of a flutter; her friend Carole, on the other hand, thinks that the local betting shop is a den of iniquity. But when Jude stumbles upon the body of a Polish immigrant, Tadeusz Jankowski, the race is on to find his killer. The odds aren’t looking good. No one seems to know anything about the mysterious Tadeusz - even his sister can’t shed any light on what he was doing in Fethering.

Declutterer Ellen Curtis has been working to bring order into the life of Cedric Waites, a recluse in his eighties who hasn't left his house or let anyone inside it since his wife died. On one of her regular visits, Ellen finds the old man dead. Sad but, given his age, perhaps not unexpected. Until the police raise the suspicion that Cedric might have been poisoned! The cause seems be something he ate, and as Ellen cleared away the old man's food containers, she is under suspicion. As is Dodge, who works for Ellen and has unhelpfully done a runner.

Professional declutterer Ellen Curtis doesn't need to like her clients to help them sort their homes out. Aging TV personality and curmudgeon Humphrey Carter might have a chip on his shoulder the size of England, but a job's a job. But when Ellen arrives the morning after Humph's eightieth birthday party, primed and ready to tackle his study - she gets the shock of her life. Humph's dead. . . and all signs point to him having taken his own life.

Fethering residents Jude and Carole get more than they bargained for when a meal in their local pub leaves everyone with food poisoning. When a series of disasters start to befall the business it looks like it could be the end of the road for the Crown and Anchor. The two amateur detectives wonder if it might just be more than a run of bad luck. When a young man is found in the kitchen with a knife through his heart, Carole and Jude swing into action. There's a killer on the loose, and our lady sleuths need to uncover who it is before it's last orders for the pub - and themselves.

Charles Paris returns again, in a fringe show at the Edinburgh Festival, with another nubile girl to provoke him, his accommodating wife to console him and a gory murder to challenge him. Edinburgh and the Festival are both background and foreground with Charles flitting between a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a ‘mixed-media’ satire, a late-night revue and his own one-man show on Thomas Hood. Then a fading pop star is murdered, there’s a bomb scare in Holyrood Palace and someone makes a suicide leap from the top of the Rock….

Christopher Milton is one of TV’s brightest stars and the natural choice to play the lead in Lumpkin!, the musical version of She Stoops to Conquer. His is a ruthless, egomaniacal talent, guaranteed to turn his co-cast’s rehearsals into nail-biting hell. Charles Paris suspects him of harbouring at least one dark secret from years past. And then the ‘accidents’ begin. Soon it is plain that someone will stop at nothing in order to sabotage the show for their own ends.

Ellen Curtis runs her own business helping people who are running out of space. As a declutterer, she is used to encountering all sorts of weird and wonderful objects in the course of her work. What she has never before encountered is a dead body. When Ellen stumbles across the body of a young woman in an over-cluttered flat, suspicion immediately falls on the deceased homeowner's son. No doubt Nate Ogden is guilty of many things - but is he really the killer? Discovering a link between the victim and her own past, Ellen sets out to uncover the truth.

Charles Paris is in clover. He has been contracted for three whole months to play brainless bobby Sergeant Clump, foil to the charismatic amateur sleuth, Stanislas Braid, in a TV series of that name. Recourse to the whiskey bottle is still needed, however, to get him through a day’s filming - one made all the more arduous by the pompous posturings of the show’s star, and the constant outraged interruptions of the ancient author whose detective novels are being adapted. Indeed, there is plenty of friction about.

When Andrea Gower’s body is discovered in an editing suite, with gashes in her wrists and two razor blades nearby, the cause of death seems obvious, with the words she spoke only hours before taking on a completely different meaning... Working as a radio actor for the BBC was all new to Charles Paris: a new kind of work, a new jargon, and a lot of new faces - some of them quite pretty.

Originally broadcast on Radio 4 in 2003-4, We’ve Been Here Before is the topical, satirical, historical panel game that aims to show beyond all doubt that there’s nothing new in the news. Hosted by award-winning comedian, broadcaster and Whose Line Is It Anyway? star Clive Anderson, it takes a wry, witty look at long-gone days through a present-day lens, as the panellists battle it out to discover who’s got the best memory for detail when it comes to raking up the past.

A rising young stage comedian, who is about to receive his profession's award as ‘Most Promising Newcomer’, dies sensationally on stage at the start of his act; as he picks up the mike, he is electrocuted. Faulty wiring seems to be the cause; no one person is to blame; a verdict of death by misadventure is returned at the inquest.

Charles Paris is, as ever, waiting for a phone call from his agent, and is driven to painting and decorating to make ends meet. A rare evening out at a high-profile restaurant among stars of stage and screen promises a break in the depressing routine. But when the restaurant’s handsome, temperamental chef is brutally murdered, Charles finds himself drawn into the ensuing investigation. At first it seems an open and shut case: the chef’s

Due to financial hardships at Tawcester Towers, the Dowager Duchess has decreed that the only way the family fortunes can be restored is to marry Blotto off...to an American! Reluctantly, Blotto, together with Twinks and his trusty chauffeur Corky Froggett set sail.