Dr Loretta Lawson is a successful academic, teaching English literature at one of the colleges making up the University of London in the late 1980s. She is also a founding member of Fem Sap, an academic European journal that had been set up to espouse radical feminism.

It was in this latter capacity that a few years previously she had met Sandra Neil, who had been a relatively inactive member of the group for a brief period a few years before the novel opens. As they had had no contact in the intervening period, Loretta is very surprised to receive a phone call from Sandra on Christmas Eve, and even more so to find her begging to come and stay in Loretta’s flat for a few days, following a plumbing disaster in her own home.

Caught on the hope, Loretta reluctantly accedes to this plea, and Sandra duly moves in, strewing a fair amount of mayhem and disruption in her wake. The new presence in her small apartment quickly comes to grate on Loretta, and she begins to steel herself to confronting Sandra and asking her to move on. This proves unnecessary as Sandra disappears on New Year’s Eve, although she leaves her luggage behind. It is a few days before Loretta discovers that Sandra is dead, having been involved in a car accident in Hampshire. Feeling remorseful in retrospect over her lack of patience, she attends the coroner’s inquest with a view to meeting Sandra’s husband (from whom she had been led to believe that Sandra was completely estranged, although that oddly proves not to be the case), and handing over the luggage which is still in her possession. While there she meets the local police inspector who has been handling the accident, and realises that things are not entirely as they seem.

One of the charms of the Loretta Lawson novels is their deep-rooted plausibility. Dr Lawson is far from flawless, and despite her academic success, she is not infallible in her assumptions. She is, however, very resourceful, and prepared to revisit her own inferences as new evidence emerges. Joan Smith manages her plots deftly. The story progresses in perfectly reasonable steps, and there are no flashes of inspiration. She also paints a very realistic picture of the life of an academic. Much of Loretta’s day is passed in the same unexciting and bland way that the rest of us experience – she has to balance the trials of domesticity along with the occasional burdens of her job. Her relationships with friends and colleagues are far from perfect, and ebb and flow realistically.

While this novel is now about thirty years old, it hasn’t aged too badly. Obviously, none of the characters has a mobile phone, and instantaneous access to the internet might have made Loretta’s investigations a little easier, but the novel stands the test of time. ( )