Published in 1990, this is by Simon Brett. He has been, it seems, a "mainstay of English crime fiction for nearly 50 years", but this was my first exposure.

It's cosy crime, and it's the third in the Mrs Pargeter series (of which there are now eight). We're never told directly, because Mrs P. is the soul of discretion, but her late husband was obviously a bit of a crim. So when it comes to investigating the murder (because surely it wasn't suicide...) of her widowed friend Joyce, while they're both on holiday in Corfu (rather a down-market holiday, not at all the sort of thing Mr P. used to organize for her), she has lots of useful connections to draw on.


This is the rather lurid cover of my charity-shop copy


This one is much more tasteful, I think...

***

Elsewhere in my reading life, I'm in the trenches of WWI (Barker), or in the Russia of the Napoleonic wars (Tolstoy); or I'm a fly on the wall observing a totally crazy Russian family (Dostoevsky); or I'm sifting through Kafka’s legacy (Watroba), or following the progress of an evil vampire (Stoker), or exploring the impact of exile and trauma on three Libyan men in London (Matar), or finding out what it means to "pass" if you're a Black person in the 1920s in the US (Larsen).

So I really felt I needed something frothy and inconsequential, by way of a change...

And, by that standard, Mrs Pargeter's Package hit the spot. I read to the end, not without the occasional tut-tut at the fortuitousness of it all (people encounter each other "by chance"; Mrs P. often seems to just stumble on the truth; prayers are answered...). Not to mention the predictability (the array of stereotypical package guests I found a little tedious, despite their undeniable origins in reality, while Corfu is portrayed as awash with feuds and vendettas -- and I mean, maybe it is, but this is precisely what a British audience would EXPECT to read about a Mediterranean island, and snobby me prefers the road less travelled...)


En route from Bari to Patros, via Corfu, 2019. We didn't disembark, but Corfu still figures in my across-Europe-on-the-surface plans

Package is quite funny in places. The bit, for example, where Mrs P. overhears some of the conversations at the travel agency that specializes in catering for crooks: "Oh, we'll certainly reserve accommodation for a hostage as well if you think that's a possibility... Yes, all the jacuzzis in the Imperial Hotel are bulletproof..."

But the hoary old plot staples come so thick and fast that you wonder whether Brett is playing with us... We're offered identical twins; invisible writing; a family curse; a sister struck dumb by shock...

And Mrs P. (trained, we presume, by her law-evading husband) is just too calm, too fearless...

Insomma, the story kept me away from thinking heavy thoughts for a while (and that's a good thing), but it wasn't remotely up to the cosy-crime levels that people like Richard Osman have led us to expect.

I guess I've probably parted ways with Mrs Pargeter, but Simon Brett also has a series featuring an alcoholic actor called Charles Paris, who does some sleuthing on the side. I'd definitely be up for giving one of those a go...


Simon Brett