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Simon Brett
When Simon Brett studied at Oxford he became President of the OUDS, appeared in cabaret and directed the Oxford Theatre Group at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1967. Later he worked as a light entertainment producer for BBC radio and TV before taking up writing full time in 1979. He continues to write the Charles Paris and Mrs Pargeter detective series but he also made his name as the author of the radio and TV series ‘After Henry’. The radio series ‘No Commitments’ and the best-selling ‘How to be a Little Sod’ are Simon’s creations as well as the novel ‘Shock to the System’ filmed starring Michael Caine. He is married, has three children and lives in a village on the South Downs. | |||
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Simon Brett's titles | ISBNs | ||
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1-903552-32-X 1-903552-40-0 1-903552-41-9 1-903552-42-7 1-903552-43-5 1-903552-48-6 1-903552-49-4 1-903552-50-8 | |||
Cast in Order of Disappearance & So much blood A Comedian Dies & The Dead Side of the Mike Situation Tragedy & Murder Unprompted Murder in the Title & Not Dead, only Resting Dead Giveaway & What Bloody Man is That? | |||
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Cast in order of Disappearance & So much Blood to top Who killed Marius Steen, the theatrical tycoon with a fortune to leave to his young mistress Jacqui? And who killed Bill Sweet, the shady blackmailer with a supply of compromising photographs? Charles Paris, a middle-aged actor, who keeps going on booze and women, takes to detection by assuming a variety of roles including that of a Scotland Yard Detective-Sergeant. The results are both comic and dramatic. As the mythical McWirther of the Yard, he actually precipitates the crime; as one of the blackmailer’s victims he finds himself in bed with the blackmailer’s wife; as a small part player in a horror film (The Zombie Walks), he gets shot at by the murderer. And he arrives at the solution by way of the petrol crisis and an abortive attack of German measles. The second story takes Charles to the fringe show at the Edinburgh Festival where another nubile girl provokes him, his wife consoles him and a gory murder challenges him. Edinburgh and the Festival are both background and foreground, with Charles flitting between a ‘revisualised’ Midsummer Night’s Dream, a ‘mixed-media’ satire, a late-night revue, and his own one-man show on Thomas Hood and with a fading pop star as the first victim, a bomb scare in Holyrood Palace and a suicide leap from the top of the Rock. Charles copes splendidly with the Festival, with his affair with the girl with the navy blue eyes, and with a most complex murder investigation. Of the ingenious solution we will say only one thing: that Thomas Hood can provide the vital clue, in ‘The Dream of Eugene Aram’. Both stories are light-hearted frolics but at the same time beautifully ingenious puzzles buzzing with fun and wit. |  | ||
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Star Trap & An amateur Corpse to top The potential target for murder in Star Trap is a monumentally odious theatre and television star, who is currently backing, producing and starring in a musical remotely based on She Stoops to Conquer. During rehearsals, the show is afflicted by strange mishaps: the rehearsal pianist is shot in the hand, an actor falls and breaks a leg, and so on. So when Charles Paris Mr Brett’s now familiar actor/detective joins the cast, he immediately begins investigating and decides that the star himself is responsible. But why should he want to sabotage his own show? If Paris is right, it's a very odd problem. It’s a very odd problem anyway, but one that is a lot more human than it first appears. ‘Dear Old Shakespeare!’ Charles Paris could hardly wait. He had already endured the amateur theatre company’s production of Dear Old Chekhov; god only new what this self-centred group would do to The Bard. But before Charles could escape to the nearest bar, the company’s young and beautiful leading lady turned up dead strangled with her own scarf. Suddenly Charles’ interest was very much revived, especially when the police immediately arrested the wrong man. Can professional actor and amateur sleuth Charles Paris prove the suspect is innocent? For Charles, making his way through a most unseemly backstage tangle of deception, adultery and alibis would be a labour of love... Both Brett’s stories are light-hearted beautifully ingenious puzzles buzzing with fun and wit. |  | ||
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A Comedian Dies & The Dead Side of the Mike to top “Oh, Charles... so keen, and so wrong!” In the case of the comedian electrocuted in mid-act, Charles Paris was bombing. From the comely widow to the even comelier ex-girlfriend, from the desperate TV producer to the sleazy agent, all of Charles’ suspects averred that he was wrong. But while Charles-the-detective bumbled from clue to clue, a most unlikely thing occurred: Charles-the-sometimes-tipsy-actor got a job playing the straight man to a veteran comedian on the comeback trail. Just as Charles was about to find out what it was like to make people laugh (professionally, that is), his pet murder case began to come clear. And the answer who really knocked whom dead, and why, would become the most unfunny thing of all. Charles Paris is tackling this case when, between acting jobs (what else is new?), he is hired by BBC radio to research and write a programme on Swinburne for a new series called “Who reads them now?” Paris hasn’t glanced at Swinburne since leaving Oxford nearly thirty years ago, but the pay is good and the surroundings congenial. Then a young studio manager is found dead, her wrists slashed. When Charles learns that she was involved with a shady American record producer who also turns up dead another apparent suicide he begins an investigation. On his first trip to the United States, he picks up information about the American connection (and finds out that all Americans are not character actors from soap operas and police thrillers). A complicated murder plot is eventually uncovered, but as usual, Charles exhausts a list of possible suspects before stumbling onto the solution. Both Brett’s stories are light-hearted beautifully ingenious puzzles buzzing with fun and wit. |  | ||
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Situation Tragedy & Murder Unprompted to top West End TV are planning a new situation-comedy series called ‘The Strutters’. It is a spin-off from an earlier sucessful series, What’ll the Neighbours Say, which derived its humour from the conflict between the wildly bohemian central character and his very conventional neighbours, Colonel and Mrs Strutter. Now these supporting characters are themselves the stars of the new show. From the outset, things go horribly wrong with the new series in which Charles plays a golf-club barman. Odd accidents if they are accidents remove, one by one, three of the people involved and even a Yorkshire terrier. There is no discernable pattern in all this, but Charles Paris is confidently on the trail of the mass-murderer. But the bizarre solution, brilliantly led up to, surprises even him. Fame at last or so Charles Paris hopes when his latest play moves from the provinces to London’s West End. Though Charles is a competent actor he does not have the “drawing power” at the box office. As he agrees to be an understudy and a big-name star comes in Charles soon recognizes familiar signs of disaster backstage at ‘The Hooded Owl’. But even he is surprised when an actor is murdered in full view of the audience on stage on the opening night. Charles pitches in on stage and as an amateur detective in the dressing rooms. The suspects are many, ranging from a jealous wife to a bitter actor who lost his aprt to the playwright who heard his beautiful lines twisted and the director who saw his work ruined. Delightful and complex as ever, Charles goes about solving the murder with his usual blend of quiet wit and patience. |  | ||
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Murder in the Title & Not Dead, only Resting to top A provincial, historic theatre is threatend with closure by unscrupulous property developers. The theatre management seems to be digging its own grave with various troubles including bizarre accidents happening on stage. All this ends in a spectacular suicide. Or is it murder as Charles Paris suspects? As actor his career is still on the way down and this time has a walking-on part, or better a falling-on part, namely falling out of a cupboard as a corpse with a sword in his chest. However as a detective he is going from strength to strength. He soon discovers that someone is deliberately sabotaging the company, and as the theatre continues to stagger from crisis to crisis he skillfully identifies the saboteur and murderer. During a period of ‘resting’, i.e. unemployment of an actor, Charles Paris takes on a job as a house painter. Arriving for work at the flat above a very fashionable restaurant in that little hinterland of streets behind Holland Park Avenue, he finds the mutilated body of Yves Lafeu, the young chef. The chief suspect, who apparently left the country the night of the murder, may or may not be in France and may or may not have committed suicide. Yves Lafeu’s sister does not want her parents to know about their son’s life style, nor how he died, and she doesn’t like intrusion into her private life. Stan Fogden, another resting actor and decorator, turns out to be the helping hand, or rather fist. |  | ||
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Dead Giveaway & What Bloody Man is that? to top Dead Giveaway Charles Paris enters the zany world of television game shows in Dead Giveaway, a witty confection of a mystery. A bit appearance on 'If the Cap Fits means' a day's pay, a few interesting contacts, and a chance to visit the West End Television bar-not the least of incentives for a man of Charles' thirst. But murder? Even for game shows, where they'll try almost anything once, murder is going too far. Everybody seems ordinary enough when Charles arrives at the WET studios for the taping. There are, perhaps, a few too many unhappy people roaming the halls. Americans Aaron Greenberg and Dirk van Henke are furious because the Brits have changed the show's name. If Hats Off was good enough for the U.S., it should be good enough for Britain. Executive producer John Mantle is desperate to keep the Americans from cancelling his show, while host Barrett Doran seems determined to annoy everyone, from the contestants to his ex-girlfriend. And some of the contestants apparently will stop at nothing to win the game. Charles sees little to admire in either the staff or his fellow guests, but he's as surprised as anybody when murder stops the show. Murder is not funny, and the murderer clearly is not playing games. Better known for his successes at detecting than acting, Charles sets out to find the killer. Is it the surgeon, the hamburger chef, the stockbroker, the actress, the advice columnist, the TV journalist, one of the crew? The possibilities are almost limitless, but Charles, in fine fashion, finds a suspect who "fits the cap." Delightfully funny, filled with fascinating information about the world of TV game shows, Dead Giveaway is the kind of sparkling entertainment that Simon Brett's many fans have come to expect. What Bloody Man is that? Charles Paris is on his way up again, careerwise. No longer 'resting' or playing a corpse in a cupboard, he finds himself doubling almost every role in a provincial production of the play dreaded by superstitious theatrefolk: Macbeth. The three principals could hardly, be more assorted: Macbeth is played by TV gameshow personality George Birkitt; Lady Macbeth comes straight from Stratford, an intense young woman with Method in her madness; and Duncan is that notorious ham, Warnock Belvedere, who feels that he's in the great tradition of actormanagers. With such a cast, sparks are bound to fly, and it's not long before Charles Paris finds himself in the familiar role of private eye when death strikes in the night... |  | ||
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A Series of Murders & Corporate Bodies to top A Series of Murders Charles Paris, often-out-of-work actor, is gainfully employed as Sergeant Clump in what promises to be a long-running Stanislas Braid TV series, based on rather dated 1930s detective novels. He discovers a young actress’s body crushed beneath a props case and sets off yet again to prove his hunch that a death is murder, not an accident. Many of the actors and production staff had cause to dislike Sippy, but surely not enough to kill her? With revealing insights into the behind-the-camera world of television, well known author Simon Brett brings us another witty and comic mystery which masks serious themes such as love, loyalty, commitment and courage. Filming in a typical dreadful rehearsal space in London, and in appalling weather in Corfe Castle, Dorset, Charles solves the mystery to expose a most unsuspected murderer. Corporate Bodies Charles Paris takes on perhaps his most unlikely performing assignment ever in Simon Brett's wickedly witty Corporate Bodies. Charles's star gig is as "forklift-driver-for-a-day" in a Delmoleen company corporate video. Delmoleen is the creator of a green-colored snack, packaged in a biodegradable wrapper, that is supposedly destined to save the environment, restore the corporate image, and bring in big profits. The snack may or may not be truly environmentally friendly, but Charles rates the environment inside the halls of Delmoleen as definitely low on conviviality. A real forklift driver named Trevor is furious with Charles for usurping his forklift during part of the video. Charles, dressed for the occasion in blue workman's overalls, must position the forklift and then declaim in the trained voice of the actor the wonders of Delmoleen and its big, happy family of employees. Charles delivers his lines with his usual aplomb, but he can't help wondering about the "happy family." There's something about Delmoleen that is deeply troubling. Mockery, jealousy, lust, envy seem to be all pervasive. Still, the work is easy and the pay is good for a couple of hours spouting platitudes. It's even rather fun to learn to manipulate a forklift. But it's a responsibility, too, as Charles learns to his horror: a forklift can be a tool for murder. With wry humor and a penetrating sense of the ridiculous, author Simon Brett once again gives us the delightfully unpredictable world of the actor in a novel rich in plot, character, and insight into an unusual aspect of the entertainment business. | |||
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A reconstructed Corpse, Sicken and so Die & A reconstructed Corpse Charles Paris’s acting career plumbs new depths when he takes on the part of a possible murder victim in ‘Public Enemies’, a true-crime television series. Finding himself in a bizarre world somewhere between police procedure and show biz. Charles is inexorably drawn into the investigation... especially after dismembered limbs start turning up. Public Enemies’ viewers get caught up in a macabre jigsaw puzzle of death; it is ghastly, of course, but it does make good television. As the programme’s ratings soar; so the egos behind the scene become ever more inflated. Charle’s relations with his wife and agent are at an alltime low, and he all too often has recourse to Bell’s whisky, but no amount of pressure or booze can deter him from trying to solve the mystery. Sicken and so Die Things are going suspiciously well for Charles Paris. He has moved back in with his ex-wife and although he is not yet a permanent fixture in her bed, he has hopes. What's more, he has got a proper part in a proper production Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night. But this blissful state cannot last and, true to form, Charles is soon in trouble both on and off stage. And when two members of the theatre company fall suddenly ill, Charles begins to suspect that someone might actually be trying to kill him... Dead Room Farce Charles Paris is standing on stage with his trousers around his ankles, playing Aubrey, the older lover of Gilly, in Not on Your Wife! a new farce. Rehearsals have gone well, but his marriage is on the rocks yet again and in addition to Bell’s there is the attraction of ageing ingénue Cookie Stone. As the troupe reaches Bath a darker mood sets in. Cookie thinks that she and Charles are practically married (if only he could rememeber what happened!) and Charles’ friend Mark has a drink problem that amounts to a death wish. But it’s not the drink that kills Mark. The dirty little secret is in the cast and Mark could not reveal it... | |||
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