This is the sixth in the series of cosy crime stories featuring Thea Osborne, house sitter who is always being involved in murder investigations. This time Thea looks on the house sitting as a retreat to nurse her grief at her father's recent death, so is not pleased when her older sister Emily, who had a poor relationship with their father and who always put Thea down as a child, wants to come and visit to talk over her guilt and regrets at not being close to him. Emily stays for a few hours then rushes off - only to return in different, shapeless clothes (her own having been taken for examination by the police) and in an upset state, having witnessed a violent attack on a man that left his skull crushed. She tells Thea she got lost on leaving the house and after driving around in the rain and darkness for a while stopped in a gateway to try to work out where she was. She then witnessed the man being violently assaulted in a nearby layby and ran at the murderer shouting, which made him run off.

Things take a turn for the worst when Thea's boyfriend, Detective Superintendant Phil Hollis, begins to nurse suspicions because certain things about Emily's story don't quite add up. This damages their relationship which has already begun to falter after Phil injured his back at Thea's previous house sitting - he is still not fully recovered, their physical relationship has been on hold for months, and they both have to eventually acknowledge that for Thea that is his main attraction. So this novel throws up some less attractive aspects of her character.

Thea soon discovers that the dead man was a friend of Emily's husband, and this leads the police to view her with more suspicion. To make things worse, Thea had met a vicar soon after the murder, and been attracted to him - she now finds out that he is the dead man's half brother. Emily proceeds to have a breakdown and various family members try to recruit Thea's help, such as Emily's husband, and Thea's mother. More complications ensue when a friend of Thea's met on a previous house sitting turns out to be the girlfriend of the vicar - and then Thea starts to realise that he is not as nice as he appears, although at first she resists hearing this from Phil. The police turn their attention to the vicar and her friend becomes quite hostile, blaming Thea rather illogically.

One of Thea's duties at the present house is to feed two dogs which are kept chained up outside a large kennel building in the yard. She told the owners when she took on the job that she couldn't leave dogs chained like that and they had agreed she could take them singly on a lead. But when she finds only one lead, she improvises a collar for one and takes both, plus her own dog, for a walk, with the inevitable result. I did find that a rather stupid thing to do, but it is essential to the plot of the book, because the fallout from that one action leads to drastic repercussions, which I will not go into, not wishing to divulge spoilers.

I found this story more interesting than some of the others in the series, and the ending was fairly decent, whereas some of the others have been let down by slightly weak endings. So this one merits 4 stars.
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Thea's sister Emily turns up on her doorstop in a state having witnessed a brutal murder and yet her story doesn't quite ring true. What is going on?

Good twisty fun, but I do hope Thea and Phil aren't going to turn into one of those on again off again couples ( )

Another pleasing, though slow, not quite cosy mystery set in the heart of hte english countryside.

Slaughter of course being the name of the village rather than any description of what happens, altough there are a lot of deaths. This was quite a slow story, particularly as Thea is at best peripherally involved. It begins with Thea attending the death of her father - unheralded by any previous backstory, she is mid housesitting job, but manages the affair with dignity. Her sister is somewhat more distraught and comes for a visit, to talk things through. She leaves but returns a scant hour later having just witnessed a murder.Thea and DC Hollis have jus about broken up in a kind of slow drifting apart manner, so she doesn't get much of the police thoughts in the matter. The middle half of the book just drifts along as Thea minds her own business for once, and is principally concerned with her hosts dogs who appear to suspected of sheep worrying - a serious crime in the local farmers eyes. There are a lot of aspertions thrown around before Thea finally sees that not everyone who looks innocent actually is. The ending seems somewhat sudden, with a few matters left in suspense.

Much the same as the others I've read in this series, enjoyable slow rambling mystery, with a complex cast of minor characters and animals. Thea's headstrong opinions, and social commentry make a refreshing change, and the landscapes are well described. There's a lot of relationship discussions which drag a bit in places, but the feel for life in a village is well captured. Worth reading the rest of the series, although this stands alone well enough. ( )

Slaughter in the Cotswolds is the sixth in the series by Rebecca Tope, one that I liked a little more than some of the others I've read. Thea Osborne's father has just died and she, along with her older brother, two sisters and mother are mourning his loss; but Thea is committed to a house-sitting job in Lower Slaughter, another picturesque village in the Cotswolds, this time for two weeks and with the charge of caring for a parrot, two dogs, a bunch of cats and a family of ferrets. Her older sister Emily calls upon her in short order, needing to talk to her about their father and her feelings about his death, which suits Thea fine, but when Emily leaves on a rain-soaked evening, she inadvertently stumbles into a scene of one man stomping another man to death. Worse, Emily soon learns that the victim is someone she knew, a friend of her husband's, and Thea has met him as well. Thea's boyfriend Phil Hollis is, again, in charge of the case, but things are not all right on that front either - it seems their relationship has withered away, perhaps because, as Phil suggests, it was really always more about sex for Thea than anything else and since he's still recovering from a slipped disc in the last book, there's not been too much of that lately. In any event, Thea also finds herself drawn to the murder victim's gorgeous half-brother, the Reverend Peter Clarke, but her old pagan friend Ariadne is already involved with him. And then there's the sheep farmer, Henry Galton, a huge man who's furious with Thea for letting the dogs run about without a leash, particularly as immediately thereafter, some of his sheep turn up "worried" to death.... I still find Thea tremendously annoying, and once again the animals are pretty much nothing but props in the book, but at least this story has a lot of things going on in which Thea is not the center of attention for once, so I'm a bit happier with this book than some of the others. But I'm pleased that I've only got one more to go (there are more in the series, but I actually paid for the first seven). Not exactly recommended, but not as bad as some of the series. ( )