Simon Gabb had everything – or so it seemed: a beautiful house, a big estate, a flourishing business and two sons, both endowed with evident capacity for carrying on the family firm.  One was brilliant, inventive, the other dependable and efficient.  And yet something was manifestly wrong.  A secret invention, on which his business was engaged for the government, became known to those who had no right to know it.  But how and where did the leak occur? It was a mystery which created suspicion and dissension within the family and also engulfed everyone who dined with them one Saturday night.  Next morning his elder son, who, despite his oddities of behaviour, had shown such promise, was found murdered by the lake.  Smouldering emotions within the family at once flare up, confusing the issues which Inspector Mallett is called upon to unravel.

Uh-oh, I’ve used the publisher’s blurb. That’s never a good sign…

So how are you doing? I’m well – survived the first couple of weeks back at school, my students all seem lovely, and this is the fourteenth review of the month so far. In fact there’s only been one mild blot on the landscape for the past couple of days… Yup, you’ve guessed it.

I think you can file this under “wouldn’t have finished if it hadn’t been for Book Club,” but it’s a little hard to pin down what’s wrong with it.

It starts off confusingly as we get introduced to a plethora of characters. I think this is the primary problem of the book by the way there are so many characters, none of which are desperately distinctive and are introduced in a confusing way – someone will be described as someone’s wife and then a page later you might get a name for them and you have to check it’s the same person. A dramatis personae really would have helped. But it wouldn’t help with the fact that the characters were quite uninteresting and indistinct to me, at least.

There was really nothing about this that grabbed me. The choice of murderer isn’t very ambitious, the police inspector is dull…

Ah, I’m not going to say much more about this one. It was just flat and uninteresting and there are other, better books out there to read…

… unless, of course, you are the other members of my book club, who, for the most part, enjoyed it a lot more than me. There’s a whole postsworth of thoughts on reading a book when you’re in the wrong mood, have just read a really good/bad book, or just are a bit distracted and how that can affect your enjoyment. So before you dismiss this one, have a hunt around for other reviews and listen to more that just my moaning about it. Which of course, you might agree with…