A Decent Interval
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
Meet Charles Paris: a washed-up actor with a taste for wine, women . . . and solving crimes! A binge-worthy cozy mystery series from the original king of British cozy crime, internationally best-selling, award-winning author Simon Brett, OBE. For fans of Richard Osman - but with added bite!
"Like a little malice in your mysteries? Some cynicism in your cosies? Simon Brett is happy to oblige" THE NEW YORK TIMES
"Few crime writers are as enchantingly gifted" THE SUNDAY TIMES
"One of British crime's most assured craftsmen . . . Perfect entertainment" THE GUARDIAN
"A new Simon Brett is an event for mystery fans" P.D. JAMES
"Murder most enjoyable" COLIN DEXTER
_______________________
A middle-aged actor - and sometimes sleuth - takes on Hamlet
Two TV talent show winners are in the star roles . . .
Who has murderous intentions towards Hamlet and Ophelia?
That is the question in A DECENT INTERVAL!
Eternally struggling, jobbing actor Charles Paris is relieved to be offered the roles of Ghost and First Gravedigger in a production of Hamlet opening at the Grand Theatre, Marlborough. The star roles of Hamlet and Ophelia have been entrusted to TV talent show winners Jared Root and Katrina Selsey to attract a younger, social media savvy audience.
With tickets already sold out, it's on the verge of being an overwhelming success - until one of the stage's giant skull bones crashes on to Jared during rehearsals. And when Katrina is found dead during the opening night interval, Charles suspects foul play. Is there a connection between Jared's injury and Katrina's demise? Diva Katrina was roundly disliked, but who despised her enough to commit murder?
Fans of Agatha Christie, The Thursday Murder Club, Anthony Horowitz, Alexander McCall Smith, M.C. Beaton and Faith Martin will love this hilarious cozy traditional mystery series featuring one of the funniest antiheroes in crime fiction. Written over a fifty-year-period, it perfectly captures life and contemporary attitudes in 1970s London - and beyond!
READERS ADORE CHARLES PARIS:
"Brett has a rare gift for balancing humor and detection" Publishers Weekly Starred Review
"More than worth the price of admission" Booklist Starred Review
"An exhilarating read" Daily Mail
"A brilliant, extraordinary whodunit" Ryan, 5* Goodreads review
"Effortlessly readable" Adrian, 5* Amazon review
"A marvellous book" Paulinderwick, 5* Amazon review
"Another great Charles Paris mystery" David, 5* Amazon review
THE CHARLES PARIS MYSTERIES, IN ORDER:
1. Cast in Order of Disappearance
2. So Much Blood
3. Star Trap
4. An Amateur Corpse
5. A Comedian Dies
6. The Dead Side of the Mike
7. Situation Tragedy
8. Murder Unprompted
9. Murder in the Title
10. Not Dead, Only Resting
11. Dead Giveaway
12. What Bloody Man is That
13. A Series of Murders
14. Corporate Bodies
15. A Reconstructed Corpse
16. Sicken and So Die
17. Dead Room Farce
18. A Decent Interval
19. The Cinderella Killer
20. A Deadly Habit
15. A Reconstructed Corpse
16. Sicken and So Die
17. Dead Room Farce
18. A Decent Interval
19. The Cinderella Killer
20. A Deadly Habit
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Simon Brett. (2013). A Decent Interval. Severn House.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Simon Brett. 2013. A Decent Interval. Severn House.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Simon Brett, A Decent Interval. Severn House, 2013.
MLA Citation (style guide)Simon Brett. A Decent Interval. Severn House, 2013.
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Meet Charles Paris: a washed-up actor with a taste for wine, women . . . and solving crimes! A binge-worthy cozy mystery series from the original king of British cozy crime, internationally best-selling, award-winning author Simon Brett, OBE. For fans of Richard Osman - but with added bite!
|After a long period of resting, Charles Paris has been cast as the Ghost of Hamlet's Father and First Gravedigger in a new production of Hamlet. But rehersals are fraught, and one cast member ends up injured while another is found dead. Paris is forced to don the mantle of amateur detective once more to get to the bottom of the mystery.
"Like a little malice in your mysteries? Some cynicism in your cosies? Simon Brett is happy to oblige" THE NEW YORK TIMES
"Few crime writers are as enchantingly gifted" THE SUNDAY TIMES
"One of British crime's most assured craftsmen . . . Perfect entertainment" THE GUARDIAN
"A new Simon Brett is an event for mystery fans" P.D. JAMES
"Murder most enjoyable" COLIN DEXTER
_______________________
A middle-aged actor - and sometimes sleuth - takes on Hamlet
Two TV talent show winners are in the star roles . . .
Who has murderous intentions towards Hamlet and Ophelia?
That is the question in A DECENT INTERVAL!
Eternally struggling, jobbing actor Charles Paris is relieved to be offered the roles of Ghost and First Gravedigger in a production of Hamlet opening at the Grand Theatre, Marlborough. The star roles of Hamlet and Ophelia have been entrusted to TV talent show winners Jared Root and Katrina Selsey to attract a younger, social media savvy audience.
With tickets already sold out, it's on the verge of being an overwhelming success - until one of the stage's giant skull bones crashes on to Jared during rehearsals. And when Katrina is found dead during the opening night interval, Charles suspects foul play. Is there a connection between Jared's injury and Katrina's demise? Diva Katrina was roundly disliked, but who despised her enough to commit murder?
Fans of Agatha Christie, The Thursday Murder Club, Anthony Horowitz, Alexander McCall Smith, M.C. Beaton and Faith Martin will love this hilarious cozy traditional mystery series featuring one of the funniest antiheroes in crime fiction. Written over a fifty-year-period, it perfectly captures life and contemporary attitudes in 1970s London - and beyond!
READERS ADORE CHARLES PARIS:
"Brett has a rare gift for balancing humor and detection" Publishers Weekly Starred Review
"More than worth the price of admission" Booklist Starred Review
"An exhilarating read" Daily Mail
"A brilliant, extraordinary whodunit" Ryan, 5* Goodreads review
"Effortlessly readable" Adrian, 5* Amazon review
"A marvellous book" Paulinderwick, 5* Amazon review
"Another great Charles Paris mystery" David, 5* Amazon review
THE CHARLES PARIS MYSTERIES, IN ORDER:
1. Cast in Order of Disappearance
2. So Much Blood
3. Star Trap
4. An Amateur Corpse
5. A Comedian Dies
6. The Dead Side of the Mike
7. Situation Tragedy
8. Murder Unprompted
9. Murder in the Title
10. Not Dead, Only Resting
11. Dead Giveaway
12. What Bloody Man is That
13. A Series of Murders
14. Corporate Bodies
15. A Reconstructed Corpse
16. Sicken and So Die
17. Dead Room Farce
18. A Decent Interval
19. The Cinderella Killer
20. A Deadly Habit
15. A Reconstructed Corpse
16. Sicken and So Die
17. Dead Room Farce
18. A Decent Interval
19. The Cinderella Killer
20. A Deadly Habit- seriesId
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Starred review from June 10, 2013
Brett’s actor-sleuth, Charles Paris, makes a long-overdue comeback in his droll 18th outing (after 1998’s Dead Room Farce). Paris, a has-been, is delighted to get steady work in a new, offbeat English production of Hamlet, featuring reality-show stars Jared Root and Katrina Selsey as Hamlet and Ophelia, and set inside a gigantic model of the Danish prince’s skull. Root’s lack of acting talent raises the tension level on the production, as do his and Selsey’s efforts to out-diva each other. Before long, an “accident” and a murder allow Paris the chance to play amateur sleuth again. Golden-age fans will appreciate the fair-play whodunit, which demonstrates that the form can be adapted to a contemporary setting. Satirical touches, such as Paris’s reaction to a documentary about the 1455 Battle of St. Albans partially set in a shopping mall, keep the atmosphere on the lighter side. Brett has a rare gift for balancing humor and detection.
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June 29, 1998
Not On Your Wife! is a poor excuse for a stage comedy, all dropped trousers and double entendres. But then Charles Paris (Sicken and So Die, 1997) is a poor excuse for an actor--and husband, father and lover. Yet he's proved to be an enduring amateur sleuth, whose cases take place during his sporadic moments of gainful employment. This latest dire dramatic vehicle is debuting in Bath, and Charles, between boozing bouts with his beloved Bells whiskey and romantic bouts with Cookie Stone, an aging actress unaccountably smitten with him, has landed a nice gig on the side reading books on tape. Mark Lear is in charge of the recording facility. He's a former BBC man and a bigger and more bitter drunk than Charles. His lover, Lisa Wilson, is concerned. Charles fancies Lisa more than poor Cookie and gets a rare chance to act chivalrous when Mark dies and all the signs (especially a locked sound room as the likely place of death) point to foul play. Brett is no stranger to the dramatic arts; his A Shock to the System was a Michael Caine movie, and he scripted a popular sitcom on British television. His characters are all priceless--haughty ham actors, melodramatic drunks, driven company hacks. The play itself is trite and bawdy and rendered by the author with leering panache. Charles is once again in for bloody awful reviews, but he does find the killer after discovering that Mark once supplemented his wages with the manufacture of gay audiotapes that starred a few names familiar to Charles. Brett, who remains better known on his own side of the pond, is a master of breezy, boozy buffoonery.
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Starred review from July 1, 2013
The title of this theatrical thriller refers to both the interval between the last mystery starring actor-sleuth Charles Paris (16 years) and the British equivalent of intermission. At the interval during the first performance of a new production of Hamlet, Paris discovers a dead cast member in a dressing room. In the eighteenth installment of this series, Paris has ended a long period of involuntary unemployment (resting, in actor-speak) by landing the roles of the ghost of Hamlet's father and the first gravedigger. Things have changed since the last time Paris was summoned to the stage. For one thing, the younger actors tweet constantly, carry water bottles, and visit the gym, not the pub, in their free time. And Hamlet and Ophelia are played by, respectively, a reality TV star who can't project his voice and the winner of a TV talent show who wants to inject pop songs into Ophelia's scenes. What hasn't changed is Paris himself, still drinking and vowing not to drink, still trying to get back with his estranged (for good reason) wife, still loving his work, but resigned to how unfair the profession is. And Paris can still solve the crimes he stumbles across because he can prowl around the most hidden parts of a theater, unnoticed as only an actor with small parts can. Two Hamlets, two Ophelias, a range of jostling egos, stage history and lore, and the wry figure of Paris himself make this more than worth the price of admission.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)
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July 1, 2013
After a 16-year absence, reprobate actor Charles Paris totters back on stage. Still not quite ready for stardom, Charles Paris is grateful to accept the dual roles of First Gravedigger and Father's Ghost in Tony Copeland's road-company production of Hamlet, to be directed by Ned English, whose outre artistic sensibilities demand that the stage set be a replica of the interior of Hamlet's skull. To fill seats, Copeland has hired television pop stars Jared Root and Katrina Selsey to play the doomed lovers. And that's when everything goes wrong. Jared is hospitalized when a bit of the set's parietal bone falls on him; Katrina falls dead when she switches dressing rooms, pokes her eye with a doctored mascara wand and sags backward off a chair. Who's to blame? The understudies, of course, who now have the starring roles. But Charles, lubricating his synapses with pints at the pub and nips of Bell's whiskey at home, has other ideas, which include sexual fantasies about the actress playing Gertrude, romantic notions about getting back together with his wife, Frances, and, in the odd moment when he's not thinking about drinking or shagging, wondering who else in the troupe might have a motive. Katrina's personal manager lacks a persuasive alibi. The assistant stage manager seems to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hamlet's understudy, now replaced by a young man Copeland is grooming for stardom, is seething. So is most of the supporting cast, and the nymphet the director is bonking wants to play Ophelia. The show, however, must go on, though it's destined never to reach London's West End. A cheeky sendup of TV competition shows, tweeting, texting and backstage egos. If the plot recalls that of Brett's Sicken and So Die (1997), well, that was funny too, even if both their final acts could have used a bit of tweaking.COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Meet Charles Paris: a washed-up actor with a taste for wine, women . . . and solving crimes! A binge-worthy cozy mystery series from the original king of British cozy crime, internationally best-selling, award-winning author Simon Brett, OBE. For fans of Richard Osman - but with added bite!
"Like a little malice in your mysteries? Some cynicism in your cosies? Simon Brett is happy to oblige" THE NEW YORK TIMES
"Few crime writers are as enchantingly gifted" THE SUNDAY TIMES
"One of British crime's most assured craftsmen . . . Perfect entertainment" THE GUARDIAN
"A new Simon Brett is an event for mystery fans" P.D. JAMES
"Murder most enjoyable" COLIN DEXTER
_______________________
A middle-aged actor - and sometimes sleuth - takes on Hamlet
Two TV talent show winners are in the star roles . . .
Who has murderous intentions towards Hamlet and Ophelia?
That is the question...- sortTitle
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