Judy's Review:
I loved this book. Intelligent, gritty and perceptive, it takes a complicated family murder apart with eloquently readable prose.
Four members of the Mallander family are murdered in their own remote home on Christmas Eve. Ralph, the only one left, found the bodies of his father, mother, brother and sister when he returned to the house to apologise after a festive family row.
At first police believe it’s a murder suicide committed by Ralph’s volatile brother Cameron. Then new evidence implicates Ralph as the killer and he’s arrested and charged.
His prospects at trial look grim, and his wife, Allegra, hires a private eye to find evidence to clear her husband.