As Raman writes, he’s already “cracked the triple murder at Qutub Minar last year, retrieved the stolen Nizam jewels the year before and proved that the British diplomat’s recent suicide was actually murder… his success rate is unmatched”. There are Cluedo-esque maps of the manor and family trees to enjoy, as well as Athreya himself, the sort of brilliant detective who is a joy to watch piecing together the answers. A Will to Kill is a slice of sheer pleasure: a locked-room mystery – because of course there is soon to be a death at Greybrooke Manor – which blends the feel of golden age classic crime with the modern world, while presenting a proper, thorny puzzle. One is to be used if he dies by natural means the other if he dies “unnaturally”. They’ve never met before, but Bhaskar – who has a large and complicated family – has recently written two conflicting wills. Investigator Harith Athreya is invited by the millionaire Bhaskar Fernandez to a party at his remote Greybrooke Manor, high in India’s Nilgiri Mountains. As Jack digs into the mystery, with the help of his client, he discovers a frighteningly plausible nightmare. The security fences seem designed to keep people in, rather than out he hears a scream late at night he finds a fishing boot, half buried in the scrub. Kingfisher Lodge is one of the most beautiful places he’s ever been – Heller is incredibly good at writing about nature – but “something was off, as it had been at this place from the first moment he was shown his quarters”.

Jack is a fishing guide – he’s also the protagonist of Heller’s wilderness thriller The River, but The Guide works as a standalone – and he’s here to work and to try to get away from two deaths that left him reeling. These days, “those who could afford it spent more and more time on retreat in the remotest places”, in this case an exclusive resort in the Colorado mountains, where the rich and the famous come to fish and decompress.

Peter Heller’s exceptionally good The Guide is set in a post-Covid world, one where “the first virus had mostly burned itself out and been vaccinated against, and other novel viruses had moved over the world and hit different countries more or less hard”.

The innocent baldacci summary