Review: BETRAYAL IN THE COTSWOLDS, Rebecca Tope

• 
  this edition published by Isis (large print) in 2023
  
• #20 in the Thea Slocombe series
• ISBN 978-1-39912564-2
• 306 pages

Synopsis (publisher)

A handsome, if slightly shabby, stone house in Upper Oddington is home to Umberto Kingly, as well as his three dogs, and will be Thea Slocombe's latest house-sitting assignment. Without even a local shop, Thea expects the location to be one of her quietest, until the serene atmosphere is shattered with a fatal hit-and-run.

The ensuing high-profile police investigation plunges Thea deep into the victim's complicated family dynamics and the rift that had already torn it apart. She cannot help wondering if the reverberations of scandal have led to a deliberate and murderous assault.

My Take

I have read two in this series before.

Thea Slocombe generally does house sitting, but this time she is taking on looking after 3 dogs as well, for 5 days, while their owner makes a visit to Europe selling antique clocks.

On the first day she looks out of an upstairs window to see a car pulling up outside in the street. A youngish woman gets out and is almost immediately mown down by a speeding car which not only seems to aim for her but also doesn't stop. Stunned by what she has seen, and convinced that the victim knew the driver of the car, Thea contacts a policewoman whom she knows well from earlier cases that she has been involved.

When it turns out that the victim is the niece of the man she is doing the house sitting for, Thea cooperates with the police to try to discover the reason for the murder. And what a dysfunctional family is revealed!

The plot eventually becomes very complex, and to my mind the author was struggling to hold it all together.

My rating: 4.4

I've also read

4.4, A COTSWOLD KILLING - #1
4.3, A GRAVE IN THE COTSWOLDS- #8

Review: A GRAVE IN THE COTSWOLDS, Rebecca Tope

Publisher: Allison & Busby 2010
383 pages
ISBN: 978-0-7490-0806-2
Source: my local library

Publisher's blurb

As undertaker Drew Slocombe drove to Greta Simmonds' burial in Broad Campden, deep in the heart of the Cotswolds, thoughts of his troubles at home and at work played on his mind. The last thing he was worried about was becoming a murder suspect.

Thea Osborne becomes Drew's unlikely friend and defender as she once again finds herself unwittingly involved in a brutal murder case when the council worker opposing the burial is found dead just minutes from her latest house-sitting assignment: the Cotswold home of the late Mrs. Simmonds. As they come to know more about the inhabitants of Broad Campden, Drew and Thea begin to unearth the secrets, conflicts and tensions that simmer below the surface of village life, together playing amateur detective to find the killer, and to clear Drew's name.

My take:

Introducing her sleuths from various series to each other was something that Agatha Christie occasionally did, so perhaps Rebecca Tope's strategy here is not so unusual.

She began documenting Thea Osborne's house sitting ventures with A COTSWOLD KILLING  in 2004 and A GRAVE IN THE COTSWOLDS is #8 in the series. (#9 DECEPTION IN THE COTSWOLDS has just been published)

The other series featuring Drew Slocombe who is an undertaker began in 1999 and A GRAVE IN THE COTSWOLDS is #5 in that series. Drew is conducting a service which gives clients cheaper rates and environmentally friendly burials.It is when he buries Greta Simmonds in a plot of land that she doesn't have title to that the problems start.

Will Drew and Thea get on? Fortunately for the author they do. Thea is more or less a free agent while Drew is married with an invalid wife and two young children. A GRAVE IN THE COTSWOLDS is narrated by Drew which in fact allows Thea to act independently and to undertake investigations that she tells Drew about after the event.

For the most part A GRAVE IN THE COTSWOLDS is an entertaining cozy, but I thought the final resolution was a bit too sloppy. The identity of the murderer, when it was revealed, surprised me as much as it did the other characters, so perhaps there were just not enough clues. There is also an "off-canvas" character whose influence over the culprit was an unknown.
  
My rating: 4.3

Rebecca Tope's website (in serious need of updating)

Review: COTSWOLD KILLING, Rebecca Tope

Published Allison & Busby 2004
ISBN 0-74900-664-1
281 pages
Source: Local Library
#1 in Thea Osborne series

Publisher's blurb
Nestled in the fertile hills of the Cotswolds, the village of Duntisbourne Abbots is a well-kept secret: beautiful, timeless and quintessentially English. When Joel Jennison is found slaughtered in the same field where his brother's corpse had lain ten weeks previously, a whole community falls under suspicion. Was it a family feud? An act of revenge? Could Thea's employers, now relaxing in the Bahamas, have anything to do with the murder? In calling on her neighbours to get some answers, Thea uncovers more tragedy and intrigue than she thought possible behind the chocolate- box facade of a peaceful Gloucestershire village. As a forty-something woman with no previous experience of detective work, she knows she shouldn't be getting involved. But as her new friend Harry points out sometimes a fresh eye can see through the superficial tangles to where the truth lies.

My take:

At times this book felt hard going and I sometimes became annoyed what seemed to be a welter of detail that slowed the action down.

Thea Osborne uses her husband's death as an excuse to embark on a new occupation of house-sitting. The three week job in a house in the village of Duntisbourne Abbot is her first, and it quickly becomes obvious that it is not going to be as simple as she imagines. Her employers have a detailed and comprehensive list of tasks. But not on the list is the murder of one of the locals in her back garden. And of course Thea is carrying her own share of emotional baggage.
As time goes on a suspicion grows that her police detective brother in law has somehow contrived that she got the job in the first place.

A COTSWOLD KILLING seemed to have an unnecessarily complicated plot. There are a lot of characters to sort out and a complex web of relationships to fathom. Some of the characters we meet only fleetingly, and can't be sure whether we need to remember them. Thea Osborne is an interesting character but her involvement in undertaking an investigation into her neighbours is not entirely logical. There were events such as the traffic accident which results in Thea's car being written off which raised the level of plot complexity with not much useful outcome. There were times too when the reader did not know what Thea had discovered - for example she researches local news items, sends an email off to her brother in law but doesn't tell us until pages later what it was she found.

All in all though, it is not a badly written novel. Nothing that perhaps a bit of judicious editing might not have cured.

My rating: 4.4

I kept reminding myself this is the first novel in a series, although not a debut novel, and I have since found that there are now 8 published titles in the series, and a 9th due in 2011. #8 in particular looks interesting where Thea Osoborne meets up with Drew Slocombe, the protagonist in Tope's other series. I suspect I will read another.

I will be using this book for
Cruisin' thru Cosies Reading Challenge
British Books Challenge