I like some of Simon Brett’s radio work so I was interested in what his novel writing was going to be like. The cosy little murder mystery genre is huge at the moment so this fit the mood perfectly. A widow heads to an old people’s hotel and solves quite a few crimes along the way, but mostly a murder. The characters were well done, gradually revealing themselves as the story unfolded, and the backstory to Mrs Pargeter is really intriguing and I hope in the subsequent books we get to learn more.

For some reason, I thought I’d already this but it became clear quite quickly that I hadn’t. I was aware that the film (a classic and much loved by me) took quite a different path to the book, but I didn’t realise quite how out there the book was! It starts off pretty similar, football at school, the Vietnam war, etc. But then it drifts off to quite a different destination.