Rebecca Tope

I've discovered a new author - Rebecca Tope.

http://www.rebeccatope.com/

She writes about Thea Osborne who house-sits in the Cotswolds and usually manages to get involved in a murder investigation. I suppose they are the same genre as the Euphemia Martin mysteries except that the Cotswold stories are contemporary and the Martin mysteries are Victorian. Sometimes the Tope mysteries leave me with questions (such as what happened to Jimmy, and what did the owners say when they came back from Hong King and found their dogs had been shot?) and often the murderer comes out of left field at the end of the book, but I'm reading number nine in the series at the moment, and have only missed the very first and number five, so you could say  there is something about the stories I like. 

There is an element of peering into lighted windows as darkness falls to see how other people live. Each book has a new setting, a new set of characters plus some we've met before and of course there are the animals that Thea must care for until their owners return. The dialogue is entertaining because Thea is nosy and sometimes people dislike her; the topics briefly cover all sorts of modern issues such as the right to suicide and often I find myself in agreement - and that's always nice! My local library has a raft of Tope paperback sitting on the shelf, so my reading is assured for a few weeks to come.