Scandalize my name

On the eve of Elaine Southey’s 21st birthday, Ivan Sweet has been found dead in his flat in the basement of the Southeys’ historic north London home. A slick charmer to some of the tenants – and a loathsome young scoundrel to others – his death doesn’t draw out many tears among the house’s residents and neighbours. And yet the sordid truth starts to seep into the heart of their small community – a murder is living among them, and who’s to say when they might strike again? The shrewd Oxford man Superintendent Paul Grainger finds himself faced with a small circle of suspects whose connections and hidden motives heap complexity upon complexity in this tightly wrought mystery, shot through with a chilling touch of the macabre.