THE TOMB IN TURKEY

Vacationing in Turkey, amateur sleuths Carole Seddon and Jude Nichol bring their unique combination of lightweight Fethering conflicts and murder most foul with them.

Developer Barney Willingdon, one of Jude’s many ex-lovers—not that she’d ever tell Carole—offers her and a friend the use of Morning Glory, his villa in Kayaköy, gratis any time before July. From the get-go, the two friends react very differently to this gift horse. Jude’s eager to seize the day; Carole sits on the fence even as she scopes out websites for cheap airfares and pores over guidebooks and phrasebooks. Even before they leave England, they pick up hints that there may be a dark side to Barney’s offer. His first wife, they learn, died in a suspicious accident; his relations with his second wife, Henry, are obviously strained; and he makes it clear that he’s eager to find succor in Jude’s arms once more. On arrival, the two are met by Barney’s old friend, tour guide Nita Davies, who helps them settle in, gives them information about the village, tells them about her husband, Erkan, who’s a scuba instructor, and then gets herself murdered. But when Carole, who discovers Nita’s strangled corpse resting atop a tomb she’s gone to visit, returns with Jude to show her what she’s found, the body has vanished, and Barney, when the women ask about Nita, assures them she’s gone back to England to visit the sick mother they learn died when she was 12.

The sitcom humor is anodyne but gently effective. There are so few suspects that you’ll spot the killer early on, unless of course you’re Jude, preoccupied with the men staring at her cleavage, or Carole, checking to make sure she’s remembered to take along her Imodium.