The Deaths

by Mark Lawson

Four families live in a beautiful stretch of English countryside in magnificent houses. They leave only to commute first-class to London for meetings, deals and theatre outings, or on family holidays to winter sun or half-term skiing.

But the money is running out in Britain and keeping up appearances isn't easy. As tensions and relationships develop within this group of friends, an unthinkable act of violence destroys these lives. This horrific act opens the book, but 'Lawson takes us through several hundred gripping, intricately plotted pages before we find out "whodunnit".' (Guardian)

The Deaths is a dark and brilliant social comedy about how the other half live - or how they pretend to.

Genres: Fiction, Crime, Murder Mystery, Book Club, Mystery, Unfinished, Drama

465 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2013

About the author

Mark Gerard Lawson is an English journalist and author. Specialising in culture and the arts, he is known for his column in The Guardian, and for presenting the flagship BBC Radio 4 arts programme Front Row (1998-2014), and BBC Four's Mark Lawson talks to... series.

Reviews

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a keenly observed portrait of middle class England during the winter of 2011-2012. It revolves around four families, living in the most magnificent houses in their Buckinghamshire village, (the elite of the village it has to be said). After a life of ostentatiousness, it demonstrates how the economic downturn affects them.

The dialogue is good, and the characters utterly believable. It is in turns both comical and extremely sad. It begins with the deaths of one of these families, but we don't find out the details until close to the end of the story, so we really get to know these people first, what makes them all tick. When we do get to know which family are dead and indeed whodunnit, we've got to know them all so well that it really is shocking. A good story with a heartbreaker of a conclusion.

[Alison Procter · Rating 1 out of 5]

oh dear, what a load of tripe. I read the reviews for this and thought that it sounded like a good social satire, promising humour, social observation and well constructed "whodunnit"..however, after a promising start....I felt
the characters were one dimensional, the dialogue achingly twee, and lord please don't actually tell me that people really do speak to each other ALL THE TIME in this faux double entendre/pun intended manner.. and address their children as Posie, Jammy, Squids etc. I felt I was drowning the thick soup of yummy -mummy-Cath Kidston/Kathy Lette dahlingness of it all, and, yes I know that there are indeed families living in the Shires with first names such as Jenno, Libby, Ems et al.. however do all the characters need to be so named? I didn't like a single one of them, felt no empathy for a single one of them, in fact I wish the coffee delivery man could have shot the lot of them and saved my time.. There was no social satire at all, well such as there was I found simplistic and cliched, and as for the mystery, I couldn't have cared less. Trying too hard on all counts.

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

'The Eight' are four couples who have everything money can buy, perfect afluent lives in the Buckinghamshire commuter belt..... at least that is what everyone thinks. In fact one family will be found dead in the opening chapter of this story and as the rest of the book unfolds we discover more about the hidden details of each couple as the identities of the victims and the motives behind the deaths become clear. Lawson manages to maintain the uncertainty about which family has been killed until about three quarters of the way through the book. The author really does keep you guessing, and it is only after the final details of the deaths are revealed that the reader can see the truth. This book is both a social commentary on the UK just after the financial crash, as well as being both comic and tragic in parts. An enthralling read.

[Charlotte · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very disappointing.

I felt from quite early on that it was pretty arduous to read but persevered nonetheless as I wanted to find out who was murdered and why.

I do feel like I wasted my time in finishing it. It was disappointing throughout; the writing style was often clunky; the narrative voice jumped far too often and it wasn't made clear enough who was speaking at any one time; I found it difficult to remember who was related to who and who was in whose good or bad books and why; the ending wasn't satisfactory and didn't really provide me with any closure. I did like the twist with Jonny at the end, but other than that it was a bit of an anti-climax. I also don't remember ever finding out what the PRUE file of Simon's contained...?

I can see why, in some ways, it's good observational satire of ignorant middle-class Brits whose lives rely on their lifestyle privileges. However, it was very rarely funny and often it'd just make me cringe instead (I'm amazed at the blurb referring to it as "hilarious" - really?). In addition, as someone else has commented in their review, I really did not feel the need for the extended, far-too-detailed descriptions of a) mundane, everyday activities or b) ridiculously specific things like visits to the shooting club. The latter was impossible to understand for a reader such as myself with no interest in it, and so I pretty much skipped several pages there. There was just no need to include it - it did nothing for the overall story, and there were quite a few sections like that in my opinion.

Oh, and as a final note - I found the text-speak/ illiteracy of the children to be unnecessary. In my experience, kids by the age of 14 or whatever are not quite THAT stupid, especially if they are beneficiaries of private education. I know the point was probably to emphasise that rich kids are often ignorant but it still felt a little silly.

[Damaskcat · Rating 5 out of 5]

The crimes have been committed in the first few pages of the book but the reader does not know who is dead, why they were killed, who was responsible or how it happened. The events leading up to the crimes are gradually revealed in the rest of the book but the clues are often misleading. The story revolves round four families living what some will see as ideal lives in a village in Middle England. They have Grade II listed houses, jobs which pay exceptionally well, elaborate security systems, staff to help them maintain their lifestyle, expensive cars, children at private schools and they can afford to jet off at a moment's notice to Morocco for a weekend just before Christmas.

But these four families feel under threat from recession hit Britain from the people who do not have their wealth and luxury and from the possibility of redundancy. Gradually the cracks are revealed in their lives. Marital tensions, worries about money for at least one of the families, the feeling that maybe they don't lead the charmed lives they believe they have. Tempers become frayed, illness threatens, infidelity, small crimes and shameful incidents occur. The Eight fall out amongst themselves, which is unusual.

I thought the characters were very well drawn and I got totally involved in their lives. I thought the jobs they had were carefully chosen so that they fitted in with what was going on in the country at the time the book was set - the winter of 2011-2012. There is a CEO of a luxury goods company, a public relations executive in a bank, a criminal barrister, and the CEO of a security firm. Of the wives, two do voluntary work, one is a doctor and the fourth runs an up market catering company.

The book shows how it is all too easy to get caught up in maintaining the appearances while neglecting the substance. Most of the characters were far too concerned with how they appeared to others to pay attention to what was happening under their noses. It is the outsider who sees more of what is going on - and there is an outsider who travels to London at the same time as some of the main characters - and who starts to realise that things aren't quite what they seem.

I thought the book was excellent and it shows how what is essentially a genre novel can become a book which will be read and enjoyed by people who would not usually consider reading crime. It will make many readers think about how they live their lives and whether they are neglecting the important things while they strive to live up to some ideal lifestyle which 'they' say they should have. I can see this book being an excellent choice for a book club read as it provides a great many discussion points and opinions are likely to be divided over the characters and over some of the events in the book.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this to be absolutely riveting from start to finish. I genuinely can not recall something i enjoyed reading quite to much in recent times.

The novel concentrates on four middle class couples going about their daily and seemingly perfect lives. However we are witness to what goes on behind closed doors, the need to be keeping up with the Jones, the insecurities faced and the harsh reality of what failure can mean within a social circle like this.

Its so easy to automatically be disinterested in the novel as few of the characters are instantly likeable, however the writing and the plot itself are simply amazing. A wonderful novel from start to finish.

[Anni · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can't get more topical than this, with even a prescient warning about where the next major terrorist targets will be. It is a whogetsit, rather than a whodunit - and I have to admit I didn't guess, but was so gripped from page one that I wasn't even tempted to spoil the surprise by skipping to the end.

[Maya Panika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mark Lawson is one of my favourite radio presenters; I love his sharp, easy, comic style. I was really looking forward to this novel.
Reading the blurb, I was expecting something far more lightweight: a Tom Sharpeish romp through the lives of the well-heeled in these recessionary times, so The Deaths took me very much by surprise. The style is very dense. The language is thick, rich and chewy. It was a much slower read than anticipated, and took quite a bit of getting into as a result.
The character development is intense. Each tiny aspect of every life - and there are lots of them - is intimately detailed. I found myself sighing a bit at first and begging Lawson to just get on with it already! But there's a purpose behind such thorough characterisation: you do grow to know these - frankly irritating, smug, self-satisfied and thoroughly dislikeable - people very well indeed. They become closer to you, the reader, than they are to each other: supposed friends, but really rivals, within their own, tightly exclusive circle. Knowing them so well helps a lot as the story develops and clues begin to drop and you can't help wondering, who's dead and who did it?
For a long time I suspected Simon, the irritated outsider: half Jewish, Northern, considerably less rich than the others, and with a pushy, ambitious and wannabe wife. Surely he must be the murderer? But could it not also be obese, disadvantaged, deeply in-debt, openly threatening Danny, from the advice centre where Jenno - wife of Max, possibly the richest of all the eight - volunteers, to salve her privileged conscience? It could be anyone: hints are dropped about every character in the book. But this is no Agatha Christie, this is a far deeper, more intricately crafted, beautifully observant and detailed glimpse at a slice of modern England than your regular whodunit.
It is a very dense read. It takes a lot of getting into at the start, when there's so much detail and so much of what you're reading feels irrelevant, but the technique does pay off. It's well worth the the effort to become so deeply enveloped in all these lives, until you reach the inevitable end, which is not a shock, not really even a surprise when it comes, but obvious and expected. And then comes the very, very end, which was a surprise, and which I'm not going to spoil.

[Jood · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is no spoiler to say that a murder has been committed - it is mentioned at the very start of novel - in fact it's almost a carrot-on-stick inducement to get the reader to wade through this long, wordy, slightly sordid tale

Four couples who refer to themselves as The Eight, live in beautiful rural Buckinghamshire in four identical country houses, replete with pools, barns, tennis courts, blah, blah. They are wealthy and flamboyant in their spending habits - a weekend in Morocco, holidays in far flung exotic places, vying with each other to see who orders the new flavour of the posh coffee first.....instant just doesn't do it for them. Obviously they drive the latest 4 x 4 and the kids have ponies, and go to private schools; actually the kids don't figure much in this novel, but there are bits where "teenage speak" is employed, but to me seemed not only clunky but totally irrelevant to the narrative. These children go by names such as Plum (!), Tilly and Hugo, and of course they employ nannies or au pairs who are always referred to as "the Antipodeans", as if it's all too much bother to remember the names. The Eight all have their little secrets, from shoplifting to surfing the internet for unsavoury purposes. None of these characters is likeable - quite the opposite in fact - they are positively unlikeable, but I think that's the whole point: they are shallow, intent only on their own needs and their own social circle. There are the token unemployed slobs seeking more handouts in the local CAB where one of the wealthy wives volunteers, presumably to show the contrast in the lives of the well-heeled and the down-trodden.

Although not a complicated tale by any means I was constantly confused by who was married to whom, and whose children belonged with which parents and what their surnames were. Maybe this was because these people were equally obnoxious and forgettable leading such superficial lives. The murder investigation itself is handled in a somewhat superficial way - just a mere mention here and there - but I guess the author's main thrust was the Lives of the four couples rather than The Deaths of one family.

The blurb states...."Combining ingenious plotting with forensic social comedy, this is a dark and brilliant novel of life in twenty-first-century England...." Really? No, not really.

Maybe because the copy I was sent was a proof copy, but there were one or two occasions when the story didn't flow and would jump, without warning, from one topic to another.

So - did I enjoy this novel? No, I can't say I did, and not necessarily because of the subject matter. This is a case of style over substance - too much of one and not nearly enough of the other.

[Jillwilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Nothing stirs up authorial ire so much as the question of "likable characters." In a recent interview, the novelist Claire Messud was asked if she'd want to be friends with one of her characters. Her response was something like an explosion: "For heaven's sake, what kind of question is that? Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert?... If you're reading to find friends, you're in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities. The relevant question isn't 'is this a potential friend for me?' but 'is this character alive?'" Lawson's novel wrestles with exactly this – how to keep the reader engaged when the characters are so uniformly repellent. He even has one of his (dislikable) characters bring it up during a book group discussion: "Ali Rawlinson complained that she wouldn't want any of the characters as a friend." The Eight are venal, small-minded and bullying, and if you didn't find out on page one that a handful of them have been murdered – the deaths of the title – you'd be tempted to crawl inside the pages of the book and bump off several yourself.” (http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013...)

The Deaths is The Slap minus the slap. And no one has sex on top of a dishwasher, though there is a moment of passion on a Marrakesh rooftop. I liked it a lot – it is acerbic and very funny. It’s easy to take potshots at rich people and massively enjoyable for those of us who haven’t yet subscribed to weekly deliveries of fair-trade coffee for the bench-top coffee machine. Oh, yes, this is great fun.
And if I ever had Mark Lawson around for dinner, I’d spend all my time worrying about what kind of running metanarrative was happening in his head. He is VERY incisive about the desires and neuroses of the middle class.

[Emer Tannam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable and intriguing read, although perhaps overloaded with characters. The story centres on 4 interchangeable couples, who have 2-4 kids, and 2 dogs each. Even after 400 pages it was hard to keep track of which awful person was married to whom. Nonetheless, it zips along and the whodunnit aspect works really well .

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. The narrative alternates between the discovery of several bodies in one of the big houses in a country village and the lives of several rich people who live in the big houses leading up to the moment of 'the deaths'. Being a working class lass, it was difficult to identify with the incredible wealthy main characters but it's easy enough to see the struggles on maintaining a facade as many of them are not what they purported to be. Good piece of literature with a bit of mystery.

[Layla · Rating 1 out of 5]

Woeful. I tried, but I seriously still couldn't even tell the characters apart by midway through the book because they were all so mind numbingly tedious. I had no clue who was married to whom, whose offspring belonged to whom. And nor did I care.

I couldn't even be bothered to get to (or even skim to) the end to find out which family it was that got offed in the preliminary chapter. I actually kind of hope it turned out to be all of them. I don't usually advocate mass murder suicide, but I'll make an exception in this case.

[Kim Cornelson · Rating 1 out of 5]

An arduous and tedious tale with shallow, unlikeable characters that attempts (but fails) to satirize classism in England during the recent Recession.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

The setting is a beautiful Berkshire village, a commuter village, on the London trainline. The characters are 'The Eight'; four couples who live with their assorted children and dogs in four wonderful houses. Houses that were built originally for the old aristocracy and have now been renovated and modernised to be occupied by the new elite. Bankers, financiers, doctors, lawyers, successful business people - these are the people that are reaping the rewards of the boom years. Seats in the first-class carriages on the daily commute, short breaks to Marrakesh and designer coffee - these are the important things in their lives. But things are changing in Britain, businesses are crumbling, the recession is hitting hard, how long can The Eight keep up their lifestyles, how long can they hide their problems from each other?

A terrible act of violence happens within the first few pages. One of the families is wiped out, a murder-suicide - the father kills his entire family. The mystery that the reader is faced with is which one of The Eight is no more? Mark Lawson has created an extremely clever, fairly complicated story here, but a story that is so compelling that despite the obnoxious characters, who I will admit that I hated from page one, it becomes one of those 'can't put down' books as the emotional fragilities and hidden secrets of each family is uncovered.

The world of designer coffee is central to this story. The reader is introduced to Jason, a delivery driver for CappuccinGo - an up-market drinks company who deliver their special coffee capsules to the new aristocracy. Jason has his own views about The Eight - they provide his living and he's grateful, but to him, this upper-class obsession with posh hot drinks is a real sign of the times. The coffee theme continues as the reader learns more about each of the families. Who managed to get the special limited-edition capsules this week? The reader is also introduced to the world of supermarket snobbery, and the temptations that arise when faced with the trusting 'scan your own' groceries.

This is a novel about the new rich, and also about how the new rich are becoming the new poor. The husbands in this book do not come out well, not at all. They are an assortment of characters, with different careers and very different bank balances, but their common bond is that they are all pretty vile. Their wives don't fare much better, on the whole they do a lot of doing nothing. Only Tom and Emily seem to have any redeeming features, she's a GP, he's ex military and they do seem to realise that life in the village is based on what people have instead of what people are. Despite this, they don't do anything to discourage the lifestyle and seem happy enough to be part of the elite.

The Deaths is very current, it deals with current situations and Mark Lawson has based his characters on people that he has come across in real life. For me, living in a small market town in the depths of Lincolnshire which is most definitely not on the commuter line, it was a revelation. I do not come across people like this, ever. Yes, I know they exist, one only has to read the newspapers to realise that. I'm pretty pleased that I don't have to endure families like this, I find them fascinating, but they would drive me mad!

Despite the obnoxious characters and their luxury lifestyles, I did get very emotional towards the end of the story. Mark Lawson exposes their vulnerabilities and their failings so well, that I shed a tear. Not for the characters really, but for the waste. The waste of their potential and the fact that their stubbornness and way of life prevented them from being honest, with themselves and with their friends.

This is a novel that raised so many questions for me. Despite having finished it over 6 weeks ago, the characters have remained in my head. I was very much looking forward to our Panel Discussion, which was lively and quite fascinating. Meeting the author was a bonus, and we were able to ask questions and get answers that only reinforced my feelings about the story.

I think that The Deaths will be a very important novel in years to come. It is a story of it's time, a social history for generations to come.

[Renita D'Silva · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely LOVED this book! Witty, satirical and fun - like eavesdropping on gossip. I adored this story and did not want it to end.

[Jill Meyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let me start my review by definitively stating that British author Mark Lawson's novel, "The Deaths", is about, oh, 75 pages too long. Weighing in at 465 pages, Lawson's "tome" could have been/should have been shorter. He could have told his story in fewer pages. BUT, his story - about 4 "golden" couples (and one other couple) living north of London in the winter of 2011-2012 - is such a good one that the reader notices the length of the book only because the content becomes "overly abundant" at times. It's a tricky thing to describe as a reviewer.

"The Deaths" opens up with the discovery by the deaths of one of the families in the "group". The local cops are called after the man from a "Cappuchino" home delivery service finds two dead dogs on the family's lawn. The cops find the bodies of four family members - mother and three children - in the house and, eventually, the body of the father on another place. The reader doesn't know which family has been murdered til almost the end of the book. However, Lawson gives plenty of clues as he writes about the four families - all with kids and dogs - during that last, dark winter.

"Class and coin" is the basis of Lawson's story. It's not a "comedy of manners" because it isn't particularly "comic". Lawson writes about five couples of the upper middle class, most of whom have made their coin by hard work. (I'm not totally sure, but possibly Duchess of Cambridge Kate's parents - the Middletons - could be included in this group - working their way up the economic ladder by hard work and invention and sending the next generation on to be further polished in private schools.) But getting to the upper middle class and staying there during a dodgy economic time are not the same thing. At least two of the four couples are enduring and hiding losses in their personal wealth. "Don't let the outside world know what we're going through" is the motto of this group's members, even has they hang on to their secrets. Other secrets include porn addiction, shoplifting, incipient alcoholism, as well as "cooking the books" at work.

The ten adults are not bad people. No one in the book is a bad person. They almost all find themselves - either as individuals or as part of a married couple - in places where "situational ethics" come into play. How to keep up the good life they've either worked hard to achieve or - in one case - inherited? Huge homes with stables and tennis courts, long weekends in Marrakesh and specially-brewed coffee are just a few of life's goodies that are hard to give up, once experienced. Mark Lawson writes very nuanced portrayals of his characters - old and young - going through some difficult times. I just wish the book was a bit shorter. It's too long, but definitely worth reading.

[Ian Mapp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perfect state of the nation book, thats starts off like a train. Killer lines, superb modern day observations as to the way that certain members of society act and some terrific humour.... which regular commuters do not try and position themselves by where the carriage door stops?

We know instantly that murders have been committed. In alternating short (the police investigating) and long (the background on the families), more and more is revealed. Its not initially clear at first who is dead and who killed them, but as the characters build, there are plenty of options and red herrings.

Its a novel about the new rich in today's society. Four groups of friends - the men share first class carriages to London - the ladies are either shoplifting luxery foods, helping at the Citizens Advice - do what the upper middle classes do. They buy designer coffees. They go on weekend xmas shopping breaks to Marakesh.

But all is not as it seems. One family is not as well off as the others. There is a great line about never having friends richer than you, as they will never act poorer. The kids - who are scarcely mentioned - are running off the rails. No-one seems happy with their lives, despite their good fortune.

There is so much to admire in the book. It tells a story. It displays the state of the nation. It makes you laugh. You can indentify with why the people are behaving as they are. It is a superb moral story.

There are a couple of weaknesses - Its too long. 464 Pages of dense prose that deserves your full attention is a little too much. The point has been made and made well. The characters are hard to pick up on - there are 8 - and despite us spending a lot of time with them individually - I was always struggling to know who was married to who. And the children are a bit of a black spot, despite them being a mirror to their parents behaviour.

A perfect, topical, novel for our times. I loved it.

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book as I'd seen the reviews and I read Mark Lawson's columns in the Guardian. But I found myself struggling after the opening chapter. The characters are so shallow and the situations described are so every-day. If you've travelled first-class on a Virgin train, it is exactly as Lawson describes, but why does he think that is interesting? Or, as one other Goodreads reviewer remarks, what's gripping about trips to Waitrose? Of course, the mundane can be rendered interesting, but for me Lawson falls well short of achieving that. This book has gone irretrievably into my 'unfinished' pile.

[Jessica Tattersall · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished the book this afternoon and can't stop thinking about it. At times I was frustrated by the slow pace of the book and the attention to every detail of their lives. However, as the plot develops it does become clear as to how important all these details are. I feel very sad because, in the end, I had become to like all the characters featured and inevitably (as we are told at the beginning of the book) some of them die a violent death.

[Steph Ollman]

I’m afraid I found this very disappointing and a struggle to plough through. There characters were all very caricaturish and hard to tell apart. The language used was frustrating from Smedgewick and Dobson for body parts / functions to the text messages of the teenagers.

[Tripfiction · Rating 3 out of 5]

The beau monde in Buckinghamshire, UK

High living in Buckinghamshire. But the facade is fragile and behind the moneyed masses – for some – are stories of despair and disintegration.

Jason, the delivery driver for CapuccinGo (otherwise Nespresso I would guess) is on his rounds delivering the rainbow-coded coffee capsules to his rich punters. But he discovers a murderous rampage at one of the big 4 houses central to the narrative. The house is quiet, the dogs are dead. What further gruesome murders might there there be in one of the “best fuck-off houses in Bucks”?

Going backwards in time this is the story leading up to the murders in this mansion. Four couples – or, a ‘ruck of chums’ – have forged their lives together as a friendship group, based on acquisition of wealth. Everything is possible but the creeping and pernicious disintegration for some within the group has started. This is England in the noughties where the bankers have raked in a fortune but society is teetering – and so are some of the richer echelons. It is no longer Waitrose for some, but Aldi and Lidl and, oh dear, the Pound Shop.

This is indeed very much a social satire of the upper middle classes where the players are an easy target for parody. The Financial Times would have it that we can care about the characters – and I did want to because it is all too easy to hack away at the stereotypes; but I didn’t. As people they were pretty much interchangeable, but perhaps the author intended this with their braying voices and Puffa jackets and scant regard for others. I had real trouble distinguishing between them all for a start and trying to get all my ducks in a row with who said what to whom, was a taxing task (but here’s a quick summary: Jonny is with Libby, Max with Jenno, Simon belongs with Tasha, and Emily (the nice one) is with Tom – once I got a grip on the dynamics, the story began to settle, but it was a struggle!).

So stereotypes aside, the author has a fabulous eye for detail and can string the most random observations together in a reasonably cohesive way. He must spend his life noting the interchanges and dynamics around him in his everyday life; and he does superb job of relaying them to his readers. But this is not a novel for everyone. It relies heavily on in-speak and cultural idioms that keep you on your toes (and leave you flummoxed if you have no idea what he is writing about). From stubble nuts (hmm) to the FT pink ink, or the “FD Stuart thing” to striping and blue-chip chocolate bars with limited Easter and Christmas specials. And what, pray, is a cuddy-wifter (there is no helpful glossary, so perhaps in the next edition that might be a consideration?). Now I know I have taken these examples out of context but even in the context I could feel my brain working overtime to UNDERSTAND. “Jellyfish nipples” now there is an image that is haunting but also just plain weird. And if you are not up to speed on the latest technology, forget it.

This is a very readable book, in the main, for the clever and astute prose, though it can get a little too clever at times. It captures the upper middle classes with their Hugos, Tillys, and Plums (names either of children or dogs, I can’t remember) and the burgeoning fragility behind the wealth, and the brash self regard, all set in fictional Middlebury, Bucks. It is all, however, rather depressing.

In terms of evoking locale it is all rolling landscapes, and winter yomps (with a brief foray to Marrakesh) but you wouldn’t buy it for a real sense of place. You would, however, buy it for a peep inside the British upper middle class. But you might recoil at what you find!

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel begins with the discovery of a series of deaths in one of four houses in a small village, called Middlebury. The four houses are mirror images of each other - highly luxurious, each set on a hill surrounded by land, they proclaim their superiority and status by location and design. In a way, the four couples who live in these houses are also mirror images; they have a similar number of children, most of whom attend the same school, they copy each other's lifestyles even to the breeds of dogs they own and they socialise together as members of 'The Eight'. The men travel into town together, to accomplish successful careers as a QC, security consultant, director of PR and as the MD of a family firm. The women number a doctor, owner of a catering company and a justice of the peace among them. They do voluntary work, walk their dogs, go to the gym together, belong to the same book group and holiday together. On the outside, it looks ideal - happy marriages, great lifestyle, comfortable and affluent. Of course, life is simply not that simple and, once you look beyond the surface, there are concerns and problems which are hidden from prying eyes.

It is not until you are near the end of this book that you discover who has died and, I have to admit, it took some self will not to peek and read the ending first. As the story unfolds, you read about the couples and their life - Jonny Crossan and wife Libby, Max Dunster and Jenno, Tom Rutherford and Emily, Simon Lonsdale and Tasha and, also, Nicky Mortimer and wife, Monifa, who are on the periphery of the group and observers of events. The couples are not all likeable by any means, and often appear self centred and arrogant, but, by the end, you feel deep sympathy for some of them - espcially among the wives. This is an uncomfortable portrait of a certain lifestyle and attitudes, but you can't help but be riveted by it. If I had any real criticism, it was a little slow in places and the ending a little abrupt, but there was much that gave you pause for thought; particularly the detective and her own discomfort about a lack of sympathy for the wealthy, plus the compromises individuals make in life to maintain the status quo. This would certainly make an excellent read for a reading group, with lots to discuss. Overall, I am glad that I read it and found it both entertaining and thought provoking.

[Kym Hamer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this. The story opens with the discovery of The Deaths but doesn't tell you who the deceased are or who killed them until the final chapters. In the meantime, four sets of well-to-do neighbours - Max & Jenno Dunster, Simon & Tasha Lonsdale, Jonny & Libby Crossan and Tom & Emily Rutherford - splash their cash in effort to keep up with each other but the real question turns out to be just who is keeping up with who? The characters themselves are not especially sympathetic but I couldn't help but keep turning page after page to find out how the discovery of the deaths in the opening chapter might fit in. Addictive reading.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I stumbled across this in a used bookstore in London, and I picked it up without having heard anything about it. Lawson successfully skewers upper-middle-class society by focusing on four families living in a village in SE England (commuting distance to London). I was pleasantly surprised by Lawson's ability to create a cast of pretty awful, damaged characters and yet somehow still elicit sympathy and sadness from me. I have often found with this kind of contemporary novel that I end up hating the characters so much that I can't even be bothered to finish.

[Stephanie Sharp · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Deaths is essentially an acerbically witty sitcom complete with adult themes, strong language, themes of a sexual nature and scenes of violence right from the very start! Joking aside, this is satire with a capital S. Here we are presented with a microcosm of the Middle (and Midlife!) Classes represented by four couples (each in their own identical barn conversion forming the corners of their own private square with their composite 3 to 4 children + 2 dogs + horses, respectively). An easy target to lampoon, one might argue, with the running joke being that these are the sort of people who subscribe to an online bespoke coffee delivery service called CapuccinGo! The scene is rural Bucks. HS2 country (the proposed high speed rail service between London and Birmingham)-- which of course is seen as a travesty, with one of the characters summing it up by saying something along the lines of: "If I wanted to get to bloody Brum, wouldn't I wish to ensure the train got there more slowly, not faster?" They shop at Waitrose, give their children names like "Plum," hire Antipodean live in au pairs, take weekends away in Marrakesh, read The Telegraph, entertain each other by giving horrid dinner parties, get exceedingly drunk on appallingly expensive wine and have excruciatingly bad sex. We've seen parodies like this before. Superimposed onto this comedy, however, lies a tragedy of epic proportions, the mass murder of a family ("The Deaths" referred to in the title). The mystery is not so much whodunnit, as much as a "who got done" as of course the victims could be any of the four families, and their identities are not revealed until much later in the book. More revealing, however, is the why question. The book doesn't get interesting until its second half, when the motives for the murder are revealed. But, these motives can only be understood against the backdrop of the society being presented here.

The action takes place in the recent past, in the intervening years following the financial crash, during the Coalition Government (so, 2011-12). This book was published in 2013. One wonders that had it been published in today's post Brexit world, these characters would certainly have voted Remain, but only because it would ensure their cleaners wouldn't be deported. Still, it is recent enough to include some topical references one finds in programmes like Have I Got News For You, such as Cameron's confusion over whether LOL means laugh out loud or lots of love, and there is a big reference to the expenses scandal that personally involves one of the characters.

The story revolves around four couples (known amongst themselves as "The Eight," as if it is their own little country club). I won't be giving away anything by saying that one of The Eight and their children (and dogs!) are found to have been murdered. The fact that it could be any one of these families due to the identical natures of their lives is a commentary in itself about "keeping up with the Joneses." The murder investigation unfolds slowly, alongside flashbacks to the everyday lives of The Eight and how each one is intertwined with the other. The story shifts points of view to each of the different characters, and this can seem confusing at first, but one soon gets into the rhythm once it's established who's who! The one annoying thing I found was the points of view of the teenage children, complete with misspellings, text speak, and complete lack of understanding of the world (relying on Google to get by). All that was missing were emojis (I think Mark Lawson missed a trick there)!

The back story of The Eight and each of the couple's relationships and interrelationships is interspersed alongside the murder investigation. In the first half of the book, I found these characters to be not fully realised, nor are they remotely likeable. I suppose that is the point. These are supposed to be caricatures rather than characters. I found it difficult to believe that men from my own generation could be so odiously sexist. I also found it difficult to believe women from my own generation could be so vacuous and obnoxious. But, I think we are supposed to really hate these elitist snobs and their narrow world views. One of the wives in The Eight volunteers her time at the CAB helping those on Benefits deal with their increasing personal debt, but instead of being sympathetic, she comes across as patronising to and slightly afraid of the very people she is supposed to be helping (just what on earth were her motives for volunteering in the first place?). One of the most odious characters in the book, a Barrister and the son of a Tory Peer, laments on how the new hate crime is going to be the poor attacking the rich. One of the Eight makes his living in security, turning his neighbours' homes into impenetrable enclaves. And so on. The remarkable feat of this book is how towards the end it made me feel sympathetic towards the characters.

Towards the end of the book I was really wishing that the mass murder extended to all four houses! But, then, just as I thought I had had enough of these people, the last 80 or so pages of the book suddenly came to life (albeit in the description of the deaths!), when the details of the murder are finally revealed and then the subsequent outpouring of grief and disbelief at such a tragedy, and finally the analysis of what led to such an act. Indeed, in the aftermath of the tragedy, there is a further unexpected tragedy in the book's denouement (which I won't give away). There are some very astute observations, in particular, regarding the reactions to the tragic event on social media by both friends and strangers. A most memorable quote being: "Supposedly, a window on the world, the news is frequently a mirror in which people only see themselves."

The Deaths is ultimately a comedy superimposed with a tragedy. And the tragedy is based upon pretence and delusion. The delusions we tell ourselves everyday, on one end of the spectrum, thinking things are worse than they actually are by catastophising the worst possible scenario, and on the other end of the spectrum, refusing to face reality and burying one's head in the sand, thinking everything is perfectly fine, when it obviously isn't. The delusion of keeping up with the Joneses, but the Joneses are not as well off as they seem. A parable for our times.

Ultimately, I think The Deaths would have worked better as a play, and I could definitely see this as a theatrical production. In one of the novel's many vignettes, the couples go out to see a West End production of Edward Albee's "A Delicate Balance." The quote that seems to have the most impact on one of the characters is, "They say we sleep to let the demons out -- to let the mind go raving mad ... and when the daylight comes again ... comes order with it." That pretty much captures the essence of this book.

[Liz · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's very rare I cant finish a book. I only got to page 40 or so before giving up! I really don't care about posh people in Waitrose or sitting on the train. From flicking ahead this tedium continues for most of the book (I saw one review mention that the dead family is not revealed until 3/4 through). Not worth my effort.

[Julie Cohen]

Not quite sure what to think. It's obviously satirical, which does tend to stop you identifying with any of the characters. It has some moments of real horror. And it's cleverly done, with red herrings aplenty. I enjoyed it and was hooked in, but it made me quite cynical and anxious, which I suppose is the point.

[Mihaela · Rating 1 out of 5]

I struggled so much with this book. So dull that the only chapters that managed to capture me were the crime related ones. I do not understand how can such awful characters can be liked and why would all those discussions be relevant to the story...

[Laura Plail · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a brilliant book, part social satire, part crime mystery. The format kept me reading, staying up way past my bed time and ignoring my toddler.