Book info

• Title Mrs Pargeter's Point of Honour
• Author Simon Brett
• Year 1998
• Genre Mystery

Meet Mrs Melita Pargeter, a vivacious widow with a talent for solving mysteries. It’s a warm September afternoon when Melita is summoned to the grand Elizabethan manor home of genteel Veronica Chastaigne. Veronica is the widow of one of Mr P’s former associates. She’s anxious for Melita’s help in returning her late husband’s gallery of priceless ‘borrowed’ paintings to their rightful owners. For Melita, it’s a point of honour to resolve any unfinished business her dearly departed husband left behind. She assembles a team of the late Mr P’s old crew, including Vanishing Vernon, Fritzi the Finger and Keyhole Crabbe, to carry out this reverse heist. But when they arrive in a red Transit van to pick up the paintings, they discover that someone has beaten them to it! Now it’s up to Melita to work out how to get the paintings back before the police catch up with her. It’s all looking a bit too much. But as usual, Melita has a trick or two up her sleeve...

Thoughts

This book in the Pargeter series was a bit different from the ones before, with our intrepid heroine actually leaning in and learning more about what her late husband did - getting a bit too involved, to the point that she apologises to the memory of him afterwards. But it was fun and interesting as a reader to see her open up a bit to this seedy underworld, where previously we have only had hints and tips about what has gone on. It’s still a good deed, a moral victory, being undertaken here, but it involves underhanded methods and that’s always more fun, especially with this great cast of characters!

Rating: 4 / 5