Summer's Lease: Tie in Edition

by John Mortimer

Book Overview

The villa near a small Tuscan town is everything the Pargeter family could want for three weeks. But when the idyll turns sour, Molly Pargeter begins to wonder about their mysterious absentee landlord.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140158278
• ISBN13: 9780140158274
• Release Date: May 1991
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.51 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 7.8"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A thinking person's summer book

The book is set in Tuscauny, where an English family is renting a home. Odd things happen, water disappears, and then someone dies. The mother, Molly Partiger, becomes obsesses with getting to the heart of these mysteries, and with meeting her mysterious landlord. It is a particular pleasure to see Mortimer's love of Shakespeare come through in Molly's Falstaff of a father, and the Hamlet-like play-within-a-play which gives Molly the final clue to the murder. Interwoven with the plot is an homage to Piero della Francesca (although it has been written that Mortimer gets everything wrong about Piero's Flagellation). The book ends with typical Mortimer poigniancy. Summer's Lease is light in the way that a Tom Stoppard play is light -- an intelligent guilty pleasure.

Fantastic book!

this book is fantastic. the masterpiece theatre production was awesome too. i would like to buy a copy of the video if anyone has one. this is definitely worth reading - and watching too!

ALMOST LIKE A TRIP TO CHIANTISHIRE!

I read this book because I saw the Masterpiece Theatre production on TV in the early nineties and fell in love with the characters and the story. This is the type of detective mystery novel where one can truly relate to the detective as she is an average person with a highly developed sense of curiosity. While I shared Molly's intense curiosity about her absent landlord and her outrage at the so called "water racket", I would not have gone as far as she did to satisfy that curiosity. Molly is rather reckless (if not stupid) towards the end and doesn't realize the consequences of her actions until too late - and even then chalks it up to coincidence. All in all the book is a quick and delightful read that will have you longing to travel to those Tuscan hills. I wish Masterpiece Theatre would rerun the film or make it available on video. You've got to see the film. The cast was so well chosen and the locations are beautiful, especially the terrace on La Felicita.

Mortimer's Italy....

John Mortimer is an extremely literate and witty writer of books, screen plays, and other material, including the Rumpole series. This book is a bit different from his other books, including Dunster. "Summer Lease" is his best book as far as I am concerned. The protagonist is a woman named Molly Pargeter. One might not beleive the creater of Mrs. Rumpole (She Who Must Be Obeyed)could manage an authentic female protagonist, but he does. Molly is an English woman married to a successful English man, successful enough to afford a villa in Tuscany for the summer--a summer's lease. Molly's semi-absent husband may or may not be faithful but they share an "unfriendly matrimonial bed." Her mostly grown children have their own lives, and her father living down the road has his own interests which don't include Molly. Left with time on her hands, Molly begins to wonder about her absent landlord. What is he up to? By doing a bit of 'detecting' she discovers the answer. At the end of the summer's lease, she has also acquired personal insight into her own life and issues. I especially enjoyed the varous scenarios Mortimer depicts as Molly moves around Tuscany, tracking the landlord, or attending to her own business -- viewing paintings in museums, attending the horse races, walking along the dusty roads, etc. This book is a good "read."

Bravo!

I did love this book. Having spent a summer in Sienna in 1969, reading this was like taking a trip back there. I especially enjoyed the mystery surrounding an enigmatic painting. This is a good companion book to "Under the Tuscan Sun", and I must admit, I liked this better.