This is the 30th (yikes!) in the Sharon McCone series. Muller published the first in 1977, I started reading them in the mid-1990s and they have been among my favourite books ever since. But the last few have seemed a bit below par to me and I decided not to splurge on the hardback this time around. A year and a half after publication I’d almost forgotten about this book to be honest, but when I spotted it again decided it was time to give it a whirl.

And I got on with it better than the recent episodes in the series. Perhaps my expectations have fallen so low that that was inevitable, but it seemed a better formed book than the recent ones. The series has been going so long that it has a lengthy cast list of characters who could play bit parts and here Muller seems to have cleared most of them away and just provided a few cameo roles for old friends. There were times when I wondered if this was going to be the last McCone book, and I don’t think I would have minded if it was, but in the end I was a little relieved to turn the final page and find a preview of the next book waiting for me (I didn’t read it - I have memory problems with these preview chapters causing me to think I’ve read books that I haven’t done and have mostly sworn off them).

Overall, this is nowhere near as good as the earlier books, but not bad all the same.