Every few books in this series Muller likes to dig into the lives of one or two of the regular (or at semi-regular and familiar) characters from the series. She juggles it all up and we end up with character development too as everything moves on just like things do in the real world. This approach to changing the series works really well for me.

This time it’s Hy Ripinsky and his business partners, the slightly shady Renshaw and Kessell, who run a big security firm who are getting the McCone investigative treatment.

Marcia Muller would have to write a truly dreadful book for me to think it was bad, but even accounting for bias towards a favoured author I’m glad to say that this is still quality mystery writing with no sign of deteriorating.