Mrs. Pargeter's Pound of Flesh: A Mrs. Pargeter Mystery - Hardcover

The late Mr. Pargeter left his widow pots of money and his address book, "a compendium of contacts which could procure a surprising range of unconventional services." When a young friend wants a slimmer self with which to welcome her husband (a former employee of the late Mr. Pargeter) home from jail, Mrs. P. uses her new sources not only to get them a free sojourn at a health spa, but also to assist in her investigation of some peculiar corpses she encounters there. Brett makes the most of the milieu, serving up delicious descriptions of "Dead Sea Mud Bath" treatments and "Mind Over Fatty Matter" products. There's even an attempted murder using a passive exercise machine. Although Brett's Charles Paris mysteries offer superior characterization, this third to feature Mrs. Pargeter (after Mrs. Presumed Dead ) is consistently witty and convincing. Readers will gobble it up, especially its six happy resolutions.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Melita Pargeter, that impossibly well-connected underworld widow (Mrs. Pargeter's Package, etc.), checks into the Brotherton Hall fat farm, along with her friend Kim Thurrock, and finds surprises unthinkable outside Brett's world of high comedy--from the cordon bleu diet she's secretly allowed, to the number of Brothertons tied into a botched burglary in Streatham that her late husband masterminded, and to the sudden death of anorexic client Jenny Hargreaves, whose improbably thin corpse promptly disappears. The death is clearly tied to self-promoting author Sue Fisher's Mind Over Fatty Matter diet empire--and also, just as clearly, to the Streatham job. A gossamer plot beefed up with the heavy jocosity Brett reserves for Mrs. P. and her raffish criminal cohorts. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.