One from the husband's shelves this time, picked up as it fitted and TIOLI challenge and I wanted a change. It was a bit of an odd mixture of social commentary, romance and thriller. But I'm not sure that it didn't actually work. I had my beady eye on the wrong person though.
Alan Wembury has just been promoted and is in charge of division R, which is mostly Deptford. Nice. He returns to hi home to tell his childhood friend the good news, she happens to be the daughter of the big house, upon whose estate his father was head gardener (see what I mean about social commentary? It would have been a bit startling in the 20s all that kind of thing). He comes across her brother (a dense piece of snobbery if ever I met one) and a lawyer (slimy as a very very slimy thing). There's some business with a society theft, and some past history with a murderer who is a whizz with disguises and whose sister was the lawyers secretary until she "committed suicide" (yeah right). It all gets a bit twisted, there's some confusion at times as to who is in the room and speaking (I'm sure Mary enters a room she's already in at one point). Having said that though, it was a fun, fast and somewhat entertaining read. Not high literature by any stretch of the imagination, but fast & furious and with some heart. ( )

The Ringer is a mysterious criminal said to be a master of disguise who is believed to be after revenge on a crooked lawyer. ( )