A strong contender for a solid country house murder of a woman many others despise. By this time in the series, Wentworth has really improved her writing style. The story has more action and less recap; Miss Silver is established as well as Inspector Randal March (and the two work together very well in this book); and the mystery itself is much tighter with a lot of suspects for the reader to consider, as well as some good red herrings.

On her twenty-first birthday Laura Fane comes into her inheritance, a manor house which her relative who is renting wants to buy. Despite her better sense she allows herself to be convinced to visit for the weekend with other new friends. It is past and current relationships that complicate her visit to an aunt she's never met, and things grow more tangled when one of the guests is murdered.

Laura is a typical Wentworth heroine: a lovely young girl who blushes at the drop of a hat. She's quickly paired with a RAF lover with a very fast courtship. By the end of the story we are left hanging on some things:

Spoiler

Will she sell the house to her aunt? Probably yes. Will boyfriend get his eyesight back? Because of True Love, probably yes.

Personally I would have preferred the boyfriend loudly proclaim at

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dinner that he and Tanis were never engaged and after she declined his offer of marriage, he sought love elsewhere.

A bold move would have scotched all the bro-ha-ha about him and Laura but no one in a Wentworth book does anything logical.

World War 2 has started and the war is addressed in the story with a light touch (it is not the main thrust of the story).

NOTE: Some of the books with this title have the wrong description. Be sure you are looking at this edition with this cover for an accurate description.