"The Cinderella Killer" by Simon Brett

This is a Charles Paris mystery, a whodunnit based around a slightly seedy acting world. In this version, Charles is playing pantomime in Eastbourne. He is way down the bill, of course; the stars are soap actors, ex-soap actors and an American actor from a world-wide comedy series. The director is obsessed with choreography, one of the Dames is a traditionalist while the other is an ex-soap star who can't act, and Charles is in a double act with an ex-boxer who also can't act. Fortunately for Charles his mind is taken off the impending disaster that is the production when the American is found dead.

Other brilliant characters include the American wife, who hates him and is suing for divorce, a missing dancer (all the dancers smoke) who claims to have known the American when she was called something else, the American's lawyer-cum-agent who will procure anything for his client, and a drug-dealing wannabe-investigative journalist.

Through this Charles quaffs Bells and Merlot and has a night of sex in which the lady is so controlling that he feels like an animated dildo!

Charles Paris mysteries are always high on humour and the plot is good enough to give the reader some opportunity to uncover some of the clues. Great fun. July 2015; 186 pages.

Other Simon Brett mysteries on this blog include:

• The Fethering mysteries featuring uptight Carole and 'healer' Jude, amateur lady detectives at a South Coast resort including Blood at the Bookies, the Corpse on the Court  and Bones Under the Beach Hut, 
• The Blotto Twinks series of thriller meets P G Wodehouse including Blotto, Twinks and the Rodents of the Riviera. 
• But the Charles Paris books such as A Decent Interval are my favourites.

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"A Decent Interval" by Simon Brett

Brett has also written the Fethering mysteries featuring uptight Carole and 'healer' Jude, amateur lady detectives at a South Coast resort including Blood at the Bookies, the Corpse on the Court and Bones Under the Beach Hut, and the Blotto Twinks series of thriller meets P G Wodehouse including Blotto, Twinks and the Rodents of the Riviera. But the Charles Paris books are my favourites.

Charles is an ageing actor wedded to a bottle of Bells whisky and his estranged wife. After eight months resting he gets two jobs in a week. The first is a day filming body parts in close up for wallpaper for a documentary on the Battle of Naseby with a washed up director, a cameraman and a girl who does make up, props, catering and sleeps with the director. His second job is as the Ghost in a touring production of Hamlet starring the winner of a singing contest as Hamlet and the winner of a talent show as Ophelia. From the outset there is tension between the real actors and the stars (who effectively run the show, telling the director what to do). Then accidents start to happen.

I love these books because of the hero's cynical take on life and his career. He may be a luvvy but by goodness he works hard at his craft, when he isn't sabotaging his own performance with a little too much whisky before the show. I adore the way Brett peppers uncomplimentary reviews throughout ("as much backbone as spaghetti") and the way he strips the glamour from the profession ("It is a fact that all actors love gibbering parts ... There's nothing actors like better than being deformed and gibbering on stage .... There are even Oscars in it .... Daniel Day Lewis and Dustin Hoffman have done very well out of gibbering. And then again, coming back to basics, playing people who gibber is so much easier than playing real people.") And poor old Charles is really rather a dinosaur: he has a lot of trouble remembering that the feminists have decreed that actresses should now be called actors (though "he refused to think of them as 'actors' if he was going to bed with them") and that women are no longer the opposite sex but the complementary sex.

Deliciously grubby but still a good whodunnit. February 2015; 202 pages

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God