Hen parties were never like this in my day. A few drinks in the pub with some mates, a bit of dressing up, maybe a wannabe Chippendale: that was your lot. Not a whole weekend at a posh glamping site with a lot of mind-body-spirit mumbo-jumbo to cleanse the soul and detox the body. Which means no alcohol and no phones. In theory, anyway.
That’s what events guru Saskia has organized for her lifelong friend Tansy, who owns a vegan cafe and is into all that stuff. There are twenty guests altogether, and four of them, chums ever since nursery, are going to be Tansy’s bridesmaids. As well as Saskia, there’s high-flying divorce lawyer Dominica, investigative journalist Farah, and Lauren, who’s something in marketing. Tansy’s marrying Ivan, who nobody else rates, Farah’s wedding to long-term boyfriend Toby is only weeks away, and Lauren’s in love with Farah’s brother Joss, hopelessly because he’s now involved with Eva. Sorry, I forgot to mention Eva. She hasn’t been around for long.
Are you keeping up so far?
It’s all going reasonably well, with the help of some smuggled vodka and a whispered Wi-Fi code, until the cacao ceremony, whatever that is. That’s when Tansy, who is allergic to everything you can think of, hence the vegan thing, collapses with anaphylactic shock and her EpiPen has gone missing.
Tansy doesn’t recover before the paramedics arrive, or at all, and by now everybody’s in shock of the non-anaphylactic kind. The police turn up as well, and between the missing EpiPen and the contents of Tansy’s cacao cup (but nobody else’s), it’s soon plain that her death wasn’t an accident. I did say hen parties weren’t like this in my day. Probably not anybody’s, ever.
Before long closely guarded secrets and carefully nursed grudges begin to crawl out of the woodwork, and suddenly no one’s safe. It becomes clear that though the remaining four are lifelong friends, they really don’t like each other very much. The question, of course, is who didn’t like Tansy enough to spike her cacao cup with something deadly? Was it bossy Saskia? Jealous Farah? Ambitious Dominica? Surely not meek and mild Lauren? And we mustn’t forget over-emotional Eva, who seems to have attached herself to the group.
Sorry, folks, I’m not
telling. You’ll just have to read it for yourself if you want to find out. Go
on, spoil yourselves, curl up with a bottle of wine and a bar of chocolate –
you’re worth it. I promise it’s jolly good fun. If you don’t count the murder.
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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick
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