The In Crowd

Detective Caius Beauchamp returns in Vassell’s inventive second mystery chronicling the bad behavior of England’s upper crust (after The Other Half). When a rowing team discovers a dead body floating in the Thames, it looks more like a tragic suicide than a crime. But Caius’s investigation soon links the body to two seemingly unconnected cold cases: the decades-old disappearance of a teenage girl from a Cornish boarding school and the vanishing of an apparel executive who ran off with his company’s pension fund and was never seen again. Caius launches inquiries into all three cases, which are complicated by the interference of a high-ranking politician with murky motives, as well as the detective’s tentative romance with Callie Foster, an upscale milliner, who may be a witness to at least one of the crimes. Caius’s quirky investigative partners, Matt Chung and Amy Noakes, also return, and the interplay among the three is even richer than in the previous entry. Vassell has wicked fun shifting narrators and timelines, and her satire remains sharp, but she stumbles while tying up the mystery’s loose ends. Still, fans of the first book will enjoy themselves. Agent: Jon Wood, RCW Literary. (Aug.)