The Deaths

Two in one: a consummately plotted crime novel and a forensic social satire from one of Britain's most highly regarded broadcasters.

Four families, the Crossans, the Dunsters, the Lonsdales and the Rutherfords live in a beautiful stretch of English countryside in magnificent listed houses, built for the old aristocracy. They are the new aristocracy: financiers, business tycoons, lawyers, doctors, magistrates. They leave their rural idyll only to commute first-class to London for meetings, deals and theatre outings or Heathrow flights to winter sun or half-term skiing.

They and their children are protected by investments, pensions and expensive security systems. But the money is running out in Britain and new divisions and connections develop between the group of friends, until, finally, deep in the English winter, an unthinkable act of violence destroys these dream lives and demonstrates that the biggest threat may come from unexpected places.

Mark Lawson's new novel is a wonderfully entertaining dark comedy of manners. This novel cleverly combines two areas of Mark's interests and insights. Firstly Mark's love of crime fiction is shown in a brilliantly conceived and (literally) executed crime story. A series of murders are committed on the first pages. It is only right at the end of the novel that you realise who the victims are and who committed the crime. And secondly, Mark just knows how the aspiring and often appalling upper middle classes live: this is social satire told with devastating and often hilarious detail.