Georgie Pattison sings again in this continuation of the amateur sleuth’s adventures. This is a heroine with all the self-doubt, anxieties and fears of any normal woman, but with the courage and sheer bloody-mindedness to find the truth. Justice matters to this lady and she’s willing to take personal risks to find it.

Once again, her reluctant local police detective is embroiled in the action. Hamilton is a woman for whom the term ‘no nonsense’ was originally coined. Get these two women together and, through the flying sparks, their combined experience, knowledge, and sheer determination to get at the truth, strike fear into the heart of the hardest of criminals.

The story is full of twists and turns and the wonderfully convoluted clues keep the reader guessing throughout the book. An added interest here is the information about the world of music and singers, fed naturally into the tale and forming both relief from the tension and material clues to the crimes.

The murders come with shocking clarity, but their motives and solutions are anything but clear; until the very end.

As always, April Taylor draws her characters, even the bit players, with a pen dripping in observational skill and experience. These are people you know, people you’ve met. No stereotypes or two-dimensional folk in these pages.

There’s an added bonus for music lovers who download the eBook: links to performances of the music featuring in the story.

Lovers of Christie and armchair crime will thoroughly enjoy this engaging tale. It says a lot for the quality of the storytelling that I read this whilst editing my own scifi novel, an intense and time-consuming process, and was so engaged by April’s tale I just had to read to the very end. A thoroughly enjoyable read.