Lake Garda, Italy, the perfect venue for a wedding, especially for any family with enough money to afford to hire the private island of Castello Fiore. And the Heywood family most certainly can for the wedding of their son Laurence to the influencer Eva Bianchi.  So the families gather, including reluctant son Toby and his would-be journalist girlfriend Robyn, Laurence’s loyal band of, well, henchmen from university and two mysterious Italian gentlemen wearing black suits with gun-shaped bulges in their jacket pockets.

As the wedding approaches, the air is split by a terrifying scream. Eva (who hasn’t exactly been making friends) is found stabbed with an ornate dagger, a duplicate of a priceless antique housed in the castle museum. As the wait for the police to arrive stretches on, the tension rises – someone on the island is a murderer…

Tom Hindle is touted as the “new heir to Agatha Christie” by Ragnar Jónasson – which does beg the question, who was the old heir? I’ve enjoyed A Fatal Crossing for the most part, and The Murder Game as well, despite finding it a bit… obvious. Here, we have yet again an enjoyable set of characters and a complex plot with lots of moving parts.

There are some nice ideas here – for example, why was Eva killed with a duplicate of the antique dagger? – and, as with The Murder Game, the relatively large cast of characters are distinct and at no point did I find myself going back and check who was who, something always appreciated. This is achieved in part by jumping the narrative from character to character – although mostly using Robyn – which gives an insight into motivations.

That, though, is my problem with the book, in that too much is given away too early in narrative in these sections that Robyn, the sleuth, is unaware of. The question of why there is a duplicate dagger is revealed to the reader very early, for example, but Robyn has to work it out and does so much later. It’s rather odd when the reader can basically rule out a lot of characters and answers some questions that the sleuth cannot, so it makes it much easier for the armchair sleuth to spot the murderer.

And that’s the problem with the mystery aspect, by the halfway point, there was only one candidate for me for the murderer – all of the other characters had their roles in the plot clearly defined to the reader. There’s also a weird bit of gravitas in a “I know the truth but I wish I was wrong” implying some terrible tragedy which isn’t really the case at all.

All in all, though, it’s a very enjoyable read that I didn’t want to put down – I don’t think it’s intended as part of a series, but I’d like to see more of Robyn in the future – but if you’re an experienced armchair detective, it’s best just to sit back and enjoy the ride.

Murder On Lake Garda is out now from Penguin in ebook and hardback. Many thanks for the review e-copy via NetGalley.