It has been ten years since a group of friends – Olive, Zach, Jazz, Michael and Seth – last saw Abigail Blythe in a Costa Rican beauty spot. Now they have all received an invitation to the launch of The Midnight Orchis, an eco-resort launched by Abigail’s family company, on exactly the same site. All of the friends have come to the reunion – in part to find out why they haven’t heard anything from Abigail in all this time.

But each of their friends have other motives for coming to the reunion and Abigail clearly has her own plans for them beyond opening the hotel – if indeed the hotel will be capable of opening… But when old rivalries resurface and murder strikes, will the truth of the events, both ten years previously and today, be uncovered, or buried forever?

The fifth standalone mystery from Tom Hindle, and I was a tad trepidatious going into it. All of Tom’s books are well-written and emulate the Golden Age style well, each of them having so much potential, but, with the exception of his debut, A Fatal Crossing, I solved them. The clues seemed to stand out to me, as did their meanings, and a fair few of my fellow armchair sleuths have told me the saem thing. But I’ve persevered with his books because, well, they are enjoyable reads, and I’ve always had the feeling that sooner or later, the plotting would gain that extra level and pull the rug out from under my over-confident backside.*

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you A Killer In Paradise.

This is what I’ve been hoping for, and, for me at least, it worked perfectly. There are clues all over the place for the reader to spot and, yes, some of them stood out. Stood out perfectly so that I could solve a good portion of the plot. And the feeling that I had was that this was the portion of the plot that I was meant to solve. Because by sorting that out and feeling very smug with myself, I missed the second level of what was going on completely. And yes, that was clued properly too.

I really enjoyed this one, and not just by being fooled good and proper. Hindle crafts a clever mystery with a small distinct cast of characters – there’s never any confusion as to who is who, which is becoming less common for this old duffer, and while one character did seem to be a little over the top, it gave a distinct set of suspects, each with a pretty good motive for committing murder.

There are so many modern pastiches out there of Golden Age mysteries, most of which forget the core aspect of what they are pastiching. If you want to see it done well, then I heartily recommend this one.

Right, one review down out of my nine holiday reads… I’ve got a lot of blogging to do…

*Not sure that works as a metaphor – just assume I read books while sitting on a rug.Thanks