The In Crowd
A Novel
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL • An electrifying, whip-smart whodunit about the dastardly misbehavior of London's high society—where being "in" or "out" can be a life-and-death matter
In the garden of a large Georgian villa in Southwest London, socialites and politicos swap gossip and sip Pimm's while making snide remarks at each other. Not far from this frivolity, though, a body has been discovered in the River Thames. At first, it appears to be an unfortunate accident, but the death is connected to this gathering of who's who in a way that may spell scandal.
Meanwhile, Detective Inspector Caius Beauchamp, attempting to enjoy an evening at the theatre, is shocked to discover another dead body, just a few seats away. The death is linked to the decades-old disappearance of a fourteen-year-old girl at a boarding school in Cornwall. Now Caius has two cases on his plate, but if he wants the resources to solve the tragic mystery of the girl's disappearance, he will have to take new orders from a shadowy government minister who contends that the accidental drowning in the Thames was anything but.
As Caius, along with his associates Matt Cheung and Amy Noakes, investigates these parallel cases, he plunges into the exclusive world of money, title, and power as only England can dish it up, where justice is available only to the privileged.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Detective Caius Beauchamp returns in Vassell's inventive second mystery chronicling the bad behavior of England's upper crust (after The Other Half). When a rowing team discovers a dead body floating in the Thames, it looks more like a tragic suicide than a crime. But Caius's investigation soon links the body to two seemingly unconnected cold cases: the decades-old disappearance of a teenage girl from a Cornish boarding school and the vanishing of an apparel executive who ran off with his company's pension fund and was never seen again. Caius launches inquiries into all three cases, which are complicated by the interference of a high-ranking politician with murky motives, as well as the detective's tentative romance with Callie Foster, an upscale milliner, who may be a witness to at least one of the crimes. Caius's quirky investigative partners, Matt Chung and Amy Noakes, also return, and the interplay among the three is even richer than in the previous entry. Vassell has wicked fun shifting narrators and timelines, and her satire remains sharp, but she stumbles while tying up the mystery's loose ends. Still, fans of the first book will enjoy themselves.
