When Penny gets a frantic call from her elderly parents, she knows that anything could be wrong from a missing pen to a heart attack. But when the call includes the phrase “the body”, things become much more serious.

Over the past few months, her parents have taken in a lodger, who has also caught Penny’s interest. But soon cracks begin to show in his façade and he becomes something of a nightmare. Have her parents taken matters into their own hands? And if so, what is she going to do about it?

For once, I’m not going to have a pop at the Amazon blurb – “Bad Sisters (no idea) meets The Good Life (there is an allotment in it) in this fresh and funny thriller”. The last bit is fairly accurate – it wasn’t on my wavelength when it came to the humour, but it whizzed by pleasantly enough. Thriller… well, there’s plenty of peril, although it is short on surprises.

You might be asking, though, why did I pick this book to read? It doesn’t seem like my normal sort of read. Well, I picked it as part of my attempt to read the CWA Whodunnit Award shortlist for this year. And that’s where the problem lies – it’s not a whodunnit except in one tiny aspect which I’d guessed almost as soon as it happened.

So I’m not going to have a pop at this book because as I said, I’m not the right audience – domestic thrillers don’t really work for me. I’m going to have a pop at the CWA Daggers…

To quote from the website:

“The Whodunnit Dagger celebrates books where the sex, swearing, and bloodletting take place off-stage – books that focus on the intellectual challenge at the heart of a good mystery, and which revolve around often quirky characters. Books in this category include cosy crime, traditional crime, and Golden Age-inspired mysteries.”

Well, first of all, there is sex and swearing in this book. But there’s no mystery for the reader to solve. Yes, the characters are quirky, that’s the strength of the book, but there is absolutely no WHODUNNIT!!!

I suppose this could come under “cosy crime” apart from the sex and the swearing, but seriously, CWA, why create a dagger called the Whodunnit when you then take books that simply aren’t?

And before anyone suggests that there were not enough contenders and they had to branch out, Everyone On This Train Is A Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson was on the long-list but was pruned. I can only assume the judges hadn’t read it – which kind of makes the idea of the longlist redundant.

Is there anyone from the CWA who wants to lift the curtain a little? Am I missing something? Because while this book is a bright, breezy read, it’s not the thing you’ve nominated it for…