England 1929, and Lord Unsworth has gathered his family together for a party – and possibly a most important announcement. But before anything can be announced, Unsworth’s niece Fanny discovers a dead body in the garden. Someone has stabbed to death a young woman – except nobody in the family knows who she is.

Enter Inspector Wintle, but when it becomes apparent that the murderer lies within the family circle, Unsworth tasks Mr Quayle, his secretary, to find the truth before the Unsworth name is engulfed by scandal. But when a second dead body appears, it may not just be scandal that threatens the family…

To quote from my last review regarding Golden Age pastichers who aren’t called Dolores Gordon-Smith – “many others, who I won’t name, seem content to use simply setting and stereotypical characters pasted over a cosy plot.” And what happens, the next book I pick up – and I’ve no idea how this got on my Kindle, probably a combination of a bargain and wine – and we’ve got another counter-example to that statement.

Because this is rather good. There’s a defined closed-circle of suspects, all of which have something to do with the plot beyond being red herrings. There’s a not-stupid police detective with a good semi-antagonistic relationship with Quayle – they both served in the war together. Quayle himself has secrets in his past that are hinted at but yet to be revealed. And all in all, it’s a nicely convoluted plot that does actually make sense at the end of the day.

It’s not perfect – there is too much outright lying by some of the characters just to obfuscate matters early on, and most of the clues are incompatible statements from different people – could have done with a little more variety there, but on the other hand, there are actually clues! So let’s not knock it for that.

All in all, I rather enjoyed this one. It’s a little dry at times and could do with a little more humour – the author makes a brave “Agatha Christie meets P G Wodehouse” claim in the afterword, but that’s really just in the characters behaving like silly arses, rather than it being particularly funny. Again, not a problem, just an observation.

This is the first in a series and it’s really clear that should you be interested in reading the second book, A Rather Dastardly Death, you need to read this one first, as most of the surviving characters look like they’ll be in that one, which might make it pretty easy to spot the murderer in this one… I’ll certainly be checking it out sooner rather than late. This is a really strong debut mystery novel from the author and I’m keen to see how the series develops.