Published 2015
Poor Will. His talent for creating beautiful gardens has not been enough to overcome the mental health issues he has had all of his life. His partner, Lily Foster and he try to make a life in London where Lily is a tattoo artist but the stress is just too much for Will. Lily leaves him, he has a complete breakdown and his mother and stepfather arrive on the scene to take him home. His mother, Caroline, blames Will’s condition on his father, a plastic surgeon who refused to do surgery on his badly deformed ear when he was a child. Caroline divorces him, marries again to Alistair and convinces him to take her and the boys to Dorset where he buys a bakery. The bakery does well and Alistair is soon running a thriving business with multiple sites. Charlie has set up practice as a psychotherapist and Will, after a brief stay with his parents moves further away to the coast in Seatown. When he tries to convince Lily Foster to join him there things take a drastic turn for the worse, Will commits suicide while she is there for a visit.
Caroline takes a job working for a famous feminist Clare Abbott, whose new book has just come out to great popular success. Caroline starts out as a housekeeper but soon takes on more responsibility, writing correspondence, shopping and handling much of Clare’s every day chores. Clare’s friend and editor, Rory Statham, can’t figure out why Clare keeps Caroline around. She is toxic much of the time and unpleasant all of the time, but Clare explains it as helping out a woman who’s lost a son. It’s much more complicated than that.
Into this mess wanders Detective Sargent Barbara Havers, on a tight leash these days because Isabelle Ardery is trying to get her transferred to the boondocks. She already has a signed request for transfer to hold over Barbara’s head if she steps out of line by even a hair. Barbara is trying to tow the line by palling around with a co-worker, Dorothea Harriman, who tries to take Barb under her wing and get her in the good graces of the boss. While they are at an outing Barbara sees Clare at a book signing and decides to buy a copy to give to Dorothea, kind of a ‘instead of me looking for a man to solve my problems, why don’t you realize that a man is not what is needed’ gesture. Clare and Barbara have a conversation, Clare admiring Barbara’s tee shirt which states, ‘And on the Sixth Day, God Made Bacon’. Clare asks her where she got it and Barb says she’ll get one for Clare, but make it clotted cream. Clare gives Barb her card but then as she’s leaving Caroline runs after he and tells her that she needs the card back, that she’s employed to keep Clare from becoming too chummy with her fans. Rory witnesses this interaction and approaches Barbara again, to give her another card and tell her not to mind about Caroline.
The encounter with Barbara ends up saving Rory’s life. When Clare dies suddenly, Rory is devastated and just can’t believe that the coroner’s verdict of a heart attack is correct. She asks Barbara if it’s possible to do another autopsy and when the results come back, she phones Rory to make an appointment for the next morning. When she arrives something is clearly amiss. Rory’s support dog, Arlo, is barking inside the flat but no one comes to the door. Havers ends up having to kind of break in, but she saves Rory’s life. Rory has been poisoned by the same substance that killed Clare Abbott.
Meanwhile Alistair has found true love at last with a co-worker, or employee would be the more accurate term so multiple suspects are on the scene. Lily Foster has a restraining order against her regarding Caroline, whom she blames for Will’s suicide. Caroline is just bat crazy and so evil that I found myself wanting her to take the blame for Clare’s death even if she didn’t do it.
Great story, love the writing, but as with all of Elizabeth George’s novels, there’s too much graphic sex. I find it unnecessary but still, her stories are about much more than that. A good read, not quick as it’s several hundred pages.