Detective Inspector Caius Beauchamp

Rupert's 30th is a black tie dinner at the Kentish Town McDonald's - catered with cocaine and Veuve Clicquot. His girlfriend Clemmie is found murdered on Hampstead Heath. All the party-goers have alibis. Naturally. This investigation is going to be about Classics degrees and aristocrats, Instagram influencers and who knows who. Or is it whom? Detective Caius Beauchamp isn't sure.

On the last Saturday in August, politicos and socialites trade tidbits of gossip and sips of Pimm's under the tasteful bunting of a Richmond garden party. They'd never guess that the police are just a stone's throw away, pulling a body out of the river Thames. The drowning appears to be a tragic accident - until Detective Caius Beauchamp gets an unexpected tip. The victim, it seems, had enemies in high places. Did being on the wrong side of them get her killed?

Detective Caius Beauchamp is dispatched to a double murder in a South London townhouse. It looks like a simple botched burglary, until Caius gets a tip-off about the well-heeled family's nefarious past. Which is worse: the body on the floor or the skeletons in the closet? Caius' own family circumstances have changed recently: some complicated inheritance tetris means he is now in line to inherit a country estate. He's still getting used to his new life in the upper echelons of society.