Aimee Spencer is determined to find her missi Ang sister, Rose, but nobody, including the police, seem to take her concerns seriously. So when Aimee finds an invitation addressed to Rose from multi-millionaire recluse Lawrence Fowley, to a exclusive annual party days before she vanished without a trace, she decides to follow the lead herself.

A year later, and Aimee has reinvented herself, started a relationship with Fowley’s cousin and has managed to be his plus-one for this year’s party. Determined to find the truth, Aimee is horrified to discover that Rose isn’t the only one who has died at these parties in the past. And then this year’s deaths begin…

Well, that was a bit of a treat.

I’ve been struggling with my choices of books recently. A couple of books I was intending to review just didn’t work for me – partly because of their length and relatively slow pace. This was a perfect antidote, a fast moving mystery/thriller. It’s not trying to do anything particularly complex – a single narrative with a reliable narrator, looking for justice and, inevitably, a murderer.

And it caught me out at the end. Completely.

At about 90% of the book, I was already composing how to bring my old friend Captain Obvious into the story. There’s a reveal at about the 80% point that is supposed to be a surprise – and quite probably would surprise a lot of readers – that I guessed was coming quite a while ago. So there was I, walking along the pavement reading my Kindle – I do look where I’m going – thinking how best to praise a book that I’d enjoyed but had been a tad clumsy (to me at least) in hiding the murderer.

And then… damn, I did not see that. So well done, Amy Cunningham. Very nicely played.

The Serial Killer’s Party is out now as an ebook and in a week or so in paperback. It’s well worth your time – many thanks to Penguin for the review e-copy via NetGalley.