Who killed Marius Steen, the theatrical tycoon with a fortune to leave his young mistress Jacqui? And who killed Bill Sweet, the shady blackmailer with a supply of compromising photographs? Charles Paris, a middle-aged actor who keeps going on booze and women, takes to detection, by assuming a variety of roles, among them that of a Scotland Yard Detective-Sergeant, and the results are both comic and dramatic. As the mythical McWhirter of the Yard, he actually precipitates the crime; as one of the blackmailer’s victims, he finds himself in bed with the blackmailer’s wife; as a small-part player in a horror film (The Zombie Walks), he gets shot at by a murderer. And he arrives at the solution by way of the petrol crisis and an abortive attack of the German measles. It’s a light-hearted frolic that is, at the same time, a beautifully ingenious puzzle, and it fizzes with fun and wit.

Charles Paris returns again, in a fringe show at the Edinburgh Festival, with another nubile girl to provoke him, and his accommodating wife to console him, and a gory murder to challenge him in So Much Blood.Edinburgh and the Festival are both background and foreground with Charles, flitting between a re-visualized Midsummer Night's Dream, a mixed-media satire, a late-night revue, and his own one-man show on Thomas Hood—and with a fading pop star as the first victim, a bomb scare in Holyrood Palace, and a suicide leap from the top of the Rock. Charles copes splendidly with the Festival, with his affair with the girl with the navy eyes, and with a most complex murder investigation.

Simon Brett is back with one of his best theater-inspired detective novels in Star Trap. Though the target for murder is an odious theater and television star, actor/detective Charles Paris finds that the main character is behind the strange happenings backstage, including the rehearsal pianist being shot in the hand, and an actor falling and breaking his leg. Why does the star want to sabotage his show? The answer is one much more human than it first appears.

An Amateur Corpse is another fascinating Simon Brett mystery set in the backdrop of theater. Charles Paris is a part-time detective and professional actor, drawn into the affairs of an amateur theater company. Charles’s friend Hugo’s wife is murdered, and Hugo is charged with the crime. Now, Paris takes on the case personally. The solution to the mystery lies in a clever double alibi. An Amateur Corpse is an absorbing, and entertaining account of theatrical backstaging, backscratching and backbiting.

A rising young stage comedian, who is about to receive his profession’s award as Most Promising Newcomer, dies sensationally on stage at the start of his act; as he picks up the mike, he is electrocuted. Faulty wiring seems to be the cause; no one person’s to blame; a verdict of death by misadventure is returned at the inquest. But Simon Brett’s actor/detective, Charles Paris, who has already solved some highly complex murders in Cast in Order of Disappearance, So Much Blood and An Amateur Corpse, happens to have been in the audience. And when another member of the cast reveals the comedian checked his equipment before the performance, Charles is launched on a further fascinating puzzle.

Murder at the BBC? It's almost unimaginable. When Andrea Gower, the beautiful studio manager is murdered, the producer's only concern is the dead air emanating from the transmitter. But Charles Paris, the now famous actor/detective has come to Broadcasting House to give a talk, and ends up as a mystery voice on a showbiz quiz show. Paris has to wallow through layers of BBC scandal, and uncovers a complicated fraud - with clues concealed in seemingly innocent announcements. These clues lead to a trap that is nearly the end of Mr. Paris in 'The Dead Side of the Mike'.

'Is everything all right?' the producer kept asking, and for a while everything was. The Strutters was destined to be the situation comedy hit of the year, with just the right mix of stars and schmaltz - along with none other than hard-drinking Charles Paris in the role of (irony of ironies!) the barman. But before Charles could get used to being in a megahit, things began going wrong.Audiobook read by Geoffrey Howard.

Published by Dell 1984, 1st thus.(#0-440-16145-2) Publisher edition: Murder Ink (alternative cover art matching Murder Ink series). Part of a complete Charles Paris collection for sale by owner

Simon Brett again takes us behind the scenes in a back-stage drama of crime and detection in Murder In The Title. This time it's the world of provincial rep, with an historic theatre threatened with closure by unscrupulous property developers. And the theatre management seems to be digging its own grave: a deplorable choice of current productions; a painfully incompetent director; bizarre accidents happening on stage.Charles is an amateur detective and a professional actor. As an actor his career is on the way down, with not much further to go. But as a detective he goes from strength to strength. He soon establishes that someone is deliberately sabotaging the company. All this culminates in a spectacular suicide. Or is it murder, as Charles Paris suspects?

Tristam Gowers and Yves Lafeu have the flamboyance of stage matinee idols, but currently they are running a very smart restaurant, Tryst, which is much patronized by top people in the theatrical profession. Which means it's not Charles Paris' usual ambience, but this small-part player, who's more successful as an amateur detective than as professional actor, is the guest tonight of another fascinating duo, William Bartlemas and Kevin O'Rourke, wealthy collectors of theatrical memorabilia. And he is in at the death: the gruesome murder of Yves. Not Dead, Only Resting seems to be an open and shut case. Tristam caught the night boat to France within hours of a spectacular public quarrel with Yves over a pretty youth, and now he has disappeared. But of course there's much more to it than that: much more, as Charles discovers when he begins to investigate.

Poor Charles Paris - as an actor, which is his chosen profession, he is reaching rock-bottom; but as a detective, the role he is continually called upon to play, he's brilliant, as he demonstrates again in his latest adventure, 'Dead Giveaway'. He is now reaching the lowest form of showbiz life, the television give-away panel game. And when he and his vast audience least expect it, there's a murder in the studio, right in front of the cameras. Once again, Simon Brett reveals his mastery as he unravels a complex mystery and revels in the humour of this showbiz world.

In 'What Bloody Man Is That?', Charles Paris is on his way up again, career-wise. No longer "resting" and no longer just a corpse in a cupboard, he blossoms in the play dreaded by superstitious theatre folk, who will not even speak its name - "the Scottish play" -'Macbeth'. It's only in the provincial rep, but you have to start (or re-start) somewhere. And his agent has promised that though what's offered is not much of a part, "other good parts are in the offing." By which perhaps is not meant precisely what happens - that Charles finds himself doubling almost every role in the play that isn't held by the three principals. And as for the principals, they could hardly be more ill sorted. Macbeth is played by George Birkitt, the TV game-show personality. Lady Macbeth comes straight from Stratford - an intense young woman with method in her madness. And Duncan is that notorious old ham, Warnock Belvedere, who feels that he's in the tradition of great actor-managers. With such a cast, sparks are bound to fly. It's not long before death strikes in the night. And Charles Paris takes on the role of private eye ...

BBC Radio 4 Full Cast Drama starring Bill Nighy as Charles Paris and featuring Suzanne Burden as his estranged wife, Frances. On a TV detective series members of the cast and crew begin to meet mysterious ends. Actor cum amateur sleuth, Charles Paris, invistigates...

Charles Paris, an out-of-work actor, gets a job appearing as a forklift operator in a corporate video, but when the forklift is used to murder a young secretary, Charles must find the killer

While playing the part of missing property developer Martin Earnshaw on "Public Enemies," a true-crime television series, actor-sleuth Charles Paris begins to uncover the shocking truth about the missing man's disappearance

Things are going suspiciously well for Charles Paris. He's moved back in with his wife, Frances, and although he's not yet a permanent fixture in her bed, he has hopes. What's more, he's got a proper part in a proper play: Sir Toby Belch in a festival production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Charles himself is a good old-fashioned actor, who wants to play Sir Toby in a traditional way. And it looks as if he'll be able to do just that, until Gavin succumbs to a mysterious case of food poisoning and an avant-garde Romanian director steps in to take over the production.

Charles Paris, Simon Brett's actor-cum-accidental sleuth, returns to the boards in this seventeenth novel in the popular series. When he is offered the chance to go on tour as a member of the cast of Not On Your Wife!, a new play by a prolific British farceur, he seizes the opportunity. The plot thickens when the tour reaches Bath. Charles seems to be too deeply into his role in the bedroom farce on stage and off; he is caught with his pants down after becoming unwittingly involved with two women. Charles is also enjoying a boisterous reunion with an old drinking buddy who runs the recording studio where Charles is making an audio book. But when his friend is found murdered, Charles quickly becomes a suspect. At least one member of the cast has a secret to hide, and Charles is soon up to his usual off-stage histrionics in an effort to clear his name so this won't become his final curtain call.

After a long period of ‘resting’, life is looking up for Charles Paris, who has been cast as the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father and First Gravedigger in a new production of Hamlet. But rehearsals are fraught. Ophelia is played by Katrina Selsey, who won the role through a television talent show. Hamlet himself is also played by a reality TV contestant, Jared Root – and the two young stars have rather different views of celebrity and the theatre than the more experienced members of the cast. But when the company reach the first staging post of their tour, the Grand Theatre Marlborough, matters get more serious, with one member of the company seriously injured in what appears to be an accident, and another dead. Once again, Charles Paris is forced to don the mantle of amateur detective to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Landing a minor part in the Empire Theatre Eastbourne's Christmas production of Cinderella, Charles Paris soon discovers that his main role is to gently introduce the show's baffled American star, famous sitcom actor Kenny Polizzi, to the bizarre customs of English pantomime. During their convivial sessions in the local pub, Charles finds himself increasingly caught up in Polizzi's tangled affairs as the American fends off a vengeful soon-to-be-ex-wife, an obsessed groupie, and a barely-controlled drink problem. But Charles is about to be far more involved than he might wish when he stumbles across a body beneath Eastbourne Pier, a neat bullet hole in the centre of the forehead. As the world's press descends on Eastbourne, the pantomime rehearsals descend into chaos and he himself comes under suspicion, it's up to Charles to put his renowned sleuthing skills to the test to find out who really killed his fellow cast member and why.

Rehearsals in a new West End play are disrupted by sudden, violent death in the intriguing new Charles Paris mystery Having landed a small part in a new West End play, The Habit of Faith, Charles Paris is dismayed to discover that his good fortune has been orchestrated by his bête noire, the now-famous screen actor Justin Grover. But why has Grover become involved in this relatively obscure production – and why has he roped in Charles to star? From the outset the production is fraught with difficulties—and matters become even more complicated when a body is discovered at the foot of the dressing room stairs. Did they fall – or were they pushed? As one of the last people to have seen the victim alive, Charles Paris is drawn into the ensuing investigation – and discovers that more than one person involved in the play has a scandalous secret to hide …