The Act of Roger Murgatroyd

The Act of Roger Murgatroyd: An Entertainment
By Gilbert Adair
Faber £7.99, 286 pages
FT bookshop price: £6.39

The setting for this novel is a snowed-in country house on Dartmoor. It is Christmas, circa 1935.

The uninvited and vituperously tongued Raymond Gentry has been murdered in the attic but the door is locked from the inside and there’s no weapon in sight.

The Cluedo-type suspects include a colonel and an actress, and the bestselling crime-writer Evadne Mount is also present to beat retired sleuth Chief Inspector Trubshawe at his own game. All have skeletons in their cupboards that are revealed gradually throughout this old-fashioned whodunnit.

This witty pastiche parodies the era of Agatha Christie, as the title - a homage to The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - suggests.