MRS. PARGETER'S POUND OF FLESH

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.