This is the 2nd Willow King mystery. It’s several years since I read the 1st in the series and I found this book hard to get into. Some of the dialogue is very stilted and some of the characters are really winding me up with how dreadfully posh they are but I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve seen how the plot turns out.

Willow lives a double life: mid-week she works as Willow King doing something in pensions and at the weekend she lives a life of luxury as a romantic novelist called Cressida Woodruffe. In the first book I found this quite an interesting basis for a detective story but it’s just irritating me in this book.

In the end the plot was the most credible part of the book with the characters at the centre of the story having reasonable motives for their actions. The way that Willow unmasked the killer involved a really big risk that I didn’t find credible though. The conclusion also relied on an entire hospital ward dutifully shuffling off to see the new 5.30 episode of Neighbours, when even I know that the anyone in hospital would watch the lunchtime edition first and not it’s afternoon repeat. It’s odd how the details can sometimes really annoy you when a book isn’t working for you.

I want to like Natasha Cooper and I have one of her later Trish Maguire books to read soon but I don’t think I’m going to try any more of the Willow King books.