Star Trap

📖 The Scoop

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
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One middle-aged British actor, with an accidental reputation as a sleuth
One West End theatre role on offer . . .
And one enormous catch
Welcome to the STAR TRAP

Middle-aged actor Charles Paris is delighted when wily solicitor and old friend Gerald Venables offers him a job: a role in a brand-new West End musical. There's just one catch - and it's a big one. It's not Charles' acting skills that have won him the coveted part, but his growing reputation as a sleuth.

Gerald represents one of Lumpkin!'s key investors, and a strange series of backstage mishaps have left him fearing someone's out to sabotage the show.

With an uncharitable letter from the tax man burning a hole in his pocket, Charles reluctantly agrees to take on the undercover role. Besides, all he has to do is keep his eyes open - how dangerous can it be?

Soon, Charles is embedded in the cast, and quickly discovers that the show's star - hit TV actor Christopher Milton - is making himself less than popular with his prima-donna behaviour. But signs of sabotage there are none - until, that is, the day of the dress rehearsal . . .

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's affectionately satirical sense of the ever-changing theatrical milieu is quite simply the best in the business" Kirkus Reviews

"Highly recommended" Library Journal

"Clever, sardonic wit" Mystery*File

"Visual and amusing, the Charles Parish books are great fun . . . Recommended" Norma, 5* GoodReads review

"Held my interest from start to finish" Randee, 5* GoodReads review

"One of his [Brett's] best theater-inspired detective novels" Mihran, 5* GoodReads review

"Reading Brett is like eating comfort food; it makes you feel good and forget your problems. It's fast-paced, is funny, full of inside theater dope, and it's fun watching our anti-hero screw up" John, 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

Genre: Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Amateur Sleuth (fancy, right?)