This book was published in 1990 and it begins with the hereditary Lord Suzy shouting “This is Rape” – his home has been burgled during the night as they slept and he feels violated. He can’t stop talking about it and when he and his wife attend a dinner party soon afterwards he is still relating the experience.

It was an okay read but I was glad that it didn’t take long as it’s only 145 pages. I find Spark’s books to be very ‘curate’s eggish’ – I don’t normally rate books but if pushed I would give this one no more than 2 out of 5. The whole storyline is quite predictable. There are no likeable characters and it really annoyed me that she has a character with red hair who is evil and the fact that she has red hair is talked of by others – “…what malign vibes that girl gives out! That red hair – ”

I had thought that that Victorian habit of giving the bad guy red hair had died out but apparently not with Spark. It’s so lazy, just like giving the baddy in a western a black hat or making the evil person in a modern film a chain smoker. It gives sustenance to those idiots (and there are plenty of them around) who think that it’s acceptable to make denigrating remarks to people simply because of the colour of their hair. They wouldn’t get away with it if they were making remarks about the colour of a person’s skin, so I don’t see why it should be acceptable for hair colour. There are characters in this book who tell the police that a person’s red hair is natural -as if it means it’s a foregone conclusion that they are a murderer.

It all adds to the nonsense which redheads are expected to put up with. I’ve always just assumed that people who do that are sick with jealousy!