I'm a huge fan of Simon Brett and I may not be capable of giving him less than 4 or 5 stars.   He's one of the five authors I would take to a desert island.  So realize as I write this review of his newest Fethering mystery that I am a huge fangirl.  All that said, I think this one lives up to what I've come to expect of him. It's fun and twisty and the characters are colorful. Jude is as free a spirit as you'll ever meet and Carole is as uptight as a person can get. Does traveling together really seem like a good idea?

Jude gets the opportunity to use the villa of an old friend for a vacation. The villa happens to be in Turkey. Carole is not at all sure that this makes any sense, she hates to leave her granddaughter and she's sure she will be sick the whole time but after much shilly-shallying she decides to go. Packing her Imodium, of course. As she suspects, the old friend is an ex-boyfriend of Jude's who's wife is a bit on the jealous side. Jude starts to wonder if she's made a terrible decision, inviting Carole to go. It should be a great vacation. I love to travel so the plot already had me intrigued. It does, however, have a little different feel than most of his other writing because usually his books are so very British and this is set in Turkey.

There are murders, there are suspects galore, there are weird neighbors, there is an exotic setting and there is the fabulously witty writing of Simon Brett. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I received this from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review but I would have bought it when it came out if I hadn't been able to get it from them.  Yeah, lifelong fan of Simon Brett.

MPM is one of my take-to-a-desert-island authors whether she’s writing as Elizabeth Peters or Barbara Michaels. Her books never fail to entertain and intrigue. Naked Once More is one of the best as is evidenced by it’s winning the Agatha Award in 1989. It comes as close to pure mystery as anything she writes and it’s wildly entertaining.

Jacqueline Kirby is in her fourth outing in this book. She’s become a famous writer of romance novels which she feels are complete rubbish but pay the bills. She’s flamboyant, extravagant, stubborn and has a great sense of humor. In Naked Once More, her manager takes her to lunch to tell her that he is retiring and also that a sequel is being planned to one of the most famous books published in recent history. It was a book called Naked in the Ice and the author, Kathleen Darcy, disappeared mysteriously 7 years ago. The courts have finally declared her dead and her family is looking for someone to write the sequel. It’s all about money.

Though there are a number of authors vying for the job, Jacquelyn does get it and moves to the small town where Darcy lived and where her family still lives. Mysterious events begin which make her and the readers realize that all is not as it seems.

A lot of time is spent dealing with the difficulties of being an author and the oddities of the publishing industry. I did wonder if the issues surrounding the problems of writers were autobiographical. That writers are compelled to write, no matter what the circumstances, certainly is a theme of this book.

Through the entire book, homage is paid to many other mystery writers. That’s always fun to see. It has great pacing, the story keeps moving forward and you are drawn along through the mystery with never a dull moment. The characters are interesting and distinctive. Her descriptions bring everything to life. There is a feel to an MPM novel that is distinctive and you would know you were reading one even if you didn’t see the name on the cover. Elizabeth Peters just knows how to make a book fun to read.

I received this copy through Netgalley and I appreciated the opportunity to give it an honest review.

Hugh Laurie states the case admirably "The first thing you should know, and probably the last, too, is that PG Wodehouse is still the funniest writer ever to have put words on paper."  I couldn't agree more.

"I'm not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare-or, if not, it's some equally brainy lad-who says that it's always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole and more than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with a bit of lead piping..  There's no doubt the man's right." And so is our first introduction to Bertie Wooster.

Bertie Wooster seems destined to always have Fate sneaking up behind him with a lead pipe.  If anything can go wrong for him, it will. Overbearing relatives, friends that need rescuing, ties that don't match the suit he's wearing. Enter Jeeves, his gentleman's gentleman.  Calm, cool, and collected,  Jeeves is always able to get Bertie and his friends out of whatever scrape they have gotten into. And he's always able to make sure that Bertie is properly attired while doing it. Comis genius is the only description of what goes on in a Jeeves story.

This book, Wodehouse's earliest writings about Jeeves, is a set of short stories, several of them about Reggie Pepper, rather than Bertie.  The two characters are almost interchangeable except for the absence of Jeeves in the Pepper stories. Some of these stories were rewritten for later Jeeves books.

If you've never read P.G. Wodhouse before, his writing is almost hard to describe.  He's quintessentially British.  He's hilarious and there is plenty of slapstick humour but there is also lots of dry humour.  His vocabulary is different than anyone else I've ever read. His use of the slang of the time and his depiction of the idle upper class and the aristocracy before WWII are just fun! He's one of the five authors who's works I would take to a desert island with me.