You arrive at a dinner party to discover that your fellow guests seem somewhat familiar – the village doctor, the vicar, the local gossip, a short-tempered ex-army officer, you know the sort. The host announces for no apparent reason that he’s going to change his will after dinner, once he’s insisted everyone takes part in a séance for some reason. And then the lights go out…

You suddenly realise that you’re trapped in a classic mystery novel – and in such a book, you know that anyone could drop dead at any moment, including you. So what on earth do you do? If only there was a book to give you some advice – and a torch to read it with, due to, as I said, the lights being out…

Something a little different for today, and I’ll start off by saying that the author of this one is a friend of mine. Kate is a fellow blogger who’s been a blogging buddy for years, she’s a member of my book group and she’s included a few Brian Flynn titles in here so, yes, I’m probably a bit biased. But on the other hand, I’m also dead jealous that she’s published a book while I’ve managed to almost finish a paragraph of my magnus opus, so maybe I’ll be unnecessarily mean about this one… I doubt it, I’m a nice person really.

This is the sort of book that is ideal as a present for the crime fiction lover in your life or, like me, for yourself. It’s divided into seven lessons, how to survive murder at home, when travelling, at work, at a party, on holiday, at school or college, and what to do if you’re the one that finds an incriminating dead body.

Each of those lessons is subdivided into sections of various styles, with all examples of what not to do containing a spoiler-free reference to a classic crime novel – although to be fair, there are some vague hints towards the solutions in a few cases. Those novels are well chosen – some of them are easy to find, having been reprinted by the British Library, Dean Street Press et al and others might take a trip to Abebooks to find a secondhand copy – Kate is incredibly well-read in the area, and there are multiple titles that I haven’t heard of!

The prose is also very witty, and even if you’ve only read a fraction of the titles mentioned, you’ll come away with a smile on your face – and a long shopping list…

How To Survive A Classic Crime Novel is available in paperback from all good bookshops – it’s not available yet on ebook, which is probably something to do with the format of the book. Whether you read it from front to back or put it on the coffee table to dip in and out of, this is well worth your time. Haven’t used the old catchphrase for a while, but this is Highly Recommended.