Play Book Tag discussion

Handsome Cambridge dropout Mark Callender died hanging by the neck with a faint trace of lipstick on his mouth. When the official verdict is suicide, his wealthy father hires fledgling private investigator Cordelia Gray to find out what led him to self-destruction. What she discovers instead is a twisting trail of secrets and sins, and the strong scent of murder.

The novel is quite short, without any unnecessary descriptions and details. I liked the main heroine: she seems witty, cold-blooded but not cold-hearted, compassionate but at the same time not too impressionable.

The mystery itself was not mysterious enough for me. And the problem was not in the novel itself. From the very beginning, I started noticing some similarities to The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith. The office seemed similar, the way of investigating the crime and even (view spoiler)[the murderer is the member of the family and also the one who asks the detective to investigate it. So I suspected Mark's father from the very beginning. (hide spoiler)]

I remember reading this when it was issued in mass market paperback in US for first time. It blew me away. One of first to feature a female private detective. I had not made the connection to The Cuckoo's Calling, but then, I read An Unsuitable Job for a Woman in the 1970s and The Cuckoo's Calling in 2017.