Eight oarsmen, well past their university years, practise weekly for the Henley regatta where they are annually an early elimination. A practice session is interrupted when an oar connects with a drowned woman.
At a party Calliope “Callie” Foster, is resplendent in a “buttermilk-coloured linen sundress that fell to the floor with a tight waist and a balcony bust - a revelation compared to the other female guests’ aggressively ditzy floral prints”. She is dutifully cutting fruit for Pimm’s and lemonade. She is maid of honour for her best friend, Harriet.
Callie is a milliner and my next post will discuss hats in The In Crowd.
Callie is socially judgmental. She does not regret have turned down Harriet’s betrothed, Inigo, for a date before he was going out with Harriet:
Callie could think of nothing worse than waking up next to such a boring man every day. He only ever wore grey or blue. She could never be in a relationship with someone with such a limited colour palette.
Subsequently, Harriet demotes Callie to bridesmaid mainly because Harriet does not want wedding photos with herself beside the very pretty Callie.
Harriet is comfortable being a snob. Her family is new money.
Callie meets DI Caius Beauchamp at a theatre where all the actors are intentionally drunk. The man seated beside them is found to be dead after being vomited upon by a cast member.
The deceased, Martin Hartley, was a retired optician, obsessed with a missing persons case 15 years old. Eliza Chapel had disappeared from St. Ursula’s, a boarding school in Cornwall.
The drowned woman, Lynne Rodgers, had been the secretary of Robert Symington 30 years ago. The day he stole his firm’s pension plan fund, he was to fly to Brazil with Rodgers. He never showed at the airport. Harriet’s father, Peter, was finance director of the firm at that time. He went on to a very successful business career in women’s fashion.
Caius is uncomfortable with the investigations. Persons in high positions, in the shadows of power, arranged for him to be assigned the cases and are pushing him for reasons unknown to Caius. He is always aware he is not a member of the upper class. With the approval of supervisors Caius shares information with the “friends in high places”.
Suspicions on where the stolen pension money went have never been proven.
The romance of Caius and Callie was captivating. Two bright and beautiful young people whose easy banter is entrancing. I wanted the relationship to succeed.
English police nutrition is changing. Caius eats “an almond protein ball that he’d batch blended” and another detective picks up sushi for lunch.
There are brilliant twists that I never saw coming that cause chaos for all the major characters. Caius finds his personal and professional lives suddenly intersecting.
Until the twists I had wondered why The In Crowd won the 2025 Edgar Best Novel Award. It had been a good book. The clever complications made it a great book. I am going to have to find The Other Half the first in the series.
Sometimes those twists and turns in a plot can really make a book interesting, Bill, and I can see why this one kept your involved. The characters sound interesting. And the mystery itself sounds intriguing, too. I don't usually go for a lot of romance in my crime fiction, but it sounds as though it works here. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
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