It’s taken me too long, as is often the case, to get around to reading the second episode in a promising series. This is the second book featuring DC Den Cooper who works out of Okehampton in Devon and follows on from A Dirty Death.

This book was really everything that the first one was, only more so. The characters are believable even when they are utterly eccentric and the plot was full of hidden secrets in close communities and made sense in the end (the “friend” of the title refers to both friends in the usual sense and the fact that the victim is a member of the Society of Friends, aka Quakers). The twists at the end of this book were the kind that make you say “oh, of course!” and not the type that make you say “what?!“.

All in all it’s one of those books I don’t want to say too much about because I think that to discuss the themes raised in the story is to give too much away with regards to the plot. It’s a funny, realistic and in many places a rather sad book and I’m looking forward to reading more of the series and may try Tope’s other series out as well.