Cozy crime set in SIDMOUTH, Devon

17th March 2025

Murder on Line One by Jeremy Vine, cozy crime set in Sidmouth, Devon (Sidmouth is apparently “God’s Waiting Room”).

2.5*

#Audiobook narrated by Jeremy Vine

Another celebrity novel. Here the author immerses himself in the world of radio, with which he is familiar.

Edward Temmis (often asked “as in Wimbledon” as his surname is misheard as tennis) is a radio presenter at the local station. He runs the evening programme and has an incredibly loyal following of geriatrics (women, mainly)

However, a year ago he suffered the loss of his young son through a hit and run accident, which naturally left him traumatised, and now he is laid off by the radio station. A natty young woman takes over his slot and his listeners are not amused (I mean, you really don’t want to upset a load of ‘crumblies‘ – sadly rather stereotyped). He takes a job at a Garden Centre, where he is approached by a young woman, Stevie, who is adamant that her grandmother had made contact with him through one of his evening programmes, whereby she had alerted him to on-going drama in her life. He has no recollection. Now, that grandmother – Rebecca ‘Riva’ Mason (a very old-fashioned name that sets this grandmother firmly in the very old person category, apparently) – is dead, having jumped head first from a second storey window in her home in order to escape a fire. The description of her head hitting the ground is probably meant to be darkly humorous. It isn’t. Stevie implores Edward to look into the case, because she is convinced there is more to her death than meets the eye.

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Edward is a conscientious and good natured sort of bloke, who has bought a run-down home, which is on the cusp of falling off a cliff (erosion due to climate change, just one of the themes in the novel which also include  romance scamming, drones and domestic abuse..). He had a very brief and lustful fling with the estate agent who sold the house to him (there’s clearly life in the old dog yet) but otherwise he has a tendency to keep himself to himself.

Various characters file through the narrative and there is an incredible level of description and observation which is engaging – but only up to a point (take the young man working at the radio station who has unruly ginger hair – oops, another stereotype). In some ways it’s enjoyable to observe what is going on through the eyes of the author but clearly Vine, during his day-to-day life, has amassed a stockpile of observations and is now determined to slide them into the narrative, which can make the prose feel over-written at times. He is trying far too hard, over-egging the pudding.

There is a fine line between humour and fatuousness, and some of the quips teeter precariously between the two. There are just TOO many similes, employed to add a level of wry jocularity – I felt swamped by them as they whipped through their ribald paces. Of Rebecca’s farmhouse he says: “The large front porch jutted proud like the chin of a champion boxer…” Errr.

Goodness, there are some not-so-funny tropes that feel well worn: for example, confusing the Japanese/Chinese; and introducing a female character with Tourette’s Syndrome, who hails from a religious family. Her pronouncements and utterances garner cheap laughs as she melds the godly with profound swearing. Really, the publishers let this through? The titter-worthy moments can be rather cringeworthy.

Look, there is a decent story at the heart of the novel and some interesting writing, Overall this a soufflé of ideas and characters, which hold together reasonably well, but the narrative is peppered with a lot of unappealing constructs.

Sidmouth and Devon come through loud and clear.

Tina for the TripFiction Team

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