This enjoyable novel scrutinises the “new aristocracy of money”: bankers, financiers, PR men. Like the old aristocracy, intelligence is not only rare among them, but in some ways undesirable; and they can appear to the critical eye as repugnant as individuals as they are daunting en masse. This is a story of four couples and their families; the central conceit of the plot is that it is revealed from the start that one of the families has been violently slaughtered, but we do not know which one. The story moves between a police investigation of the scene of a multiple murder, and the social life of the very upper middle classes.To sustain narrative tension from such a premise is no mean feat and to this extent Lawson succeeds admirably. The dialogue is good, the social comedy o