This is a little black dress of a crime novel: elegant, clean, smart.
Di Porteous is the twenty-six year old widow of a much older art collector. She lives in his beautiful old house by the sea and roams around the beach, listless and sad. She had really loved Thomas, her almost seventy year old husband. He had, in a Pygmalion sort of way, rescued her from a life of crime and taught her everything he knew about art.
Di’s friends are worried that all she does is mope on the beach, missing Thomas and obsessing about some human bones in the basement. (The bone thing is kind of weird – but it’s neatly sewn in to the plot.) Saul, dapper friend and art agent, arranges for Di to meet his sister Sarah in the hope that Sarah’s eccentric vitality will perk Di up. He’s right, it does. Sarah introduces Di to the joys of shopping for clothes and to a mad old grumpy lady whose son has stolen her paintings. Sarah and Di decide to steal the paintings back. Continue reading