While I disliked the overly broad stereotyping of almost every character on the basis of their social and economic background and although I found the misogynistic gender presumptions/generalizations difficult to bear the plot itself unwound with smoothness and precision. The author did a good job of steering the ever difficult course between making things so obvious that the reader feels insulted and making things so obscure that no reader, however vigilant, could work things out. ( )

When the most popular man in a small, middle-class English community is murdered with an obscure poison after taking coffee with the community's least popular citizen, no one doubts who the murderer is. Masters and Green must unravel a murder 25 years in the making. A pleasant, enjoyable effort. ( )