Set in Kenya during the 1930s and amidst the Happy Valley set, this is one of those pleasant switch-off reads: unchallenging easy reading but with enough style to keep the pages turning.

Gordon bases some of her characters on real people (Josslyn Hay of [book:White Mischief|776598] fame, Alice de Janzé, for example), inserts real people (the Carberrys, Lord Delamere), and then makes up others including the narrator, Theo, and his sister Maud.

It's difficult to accept that Freddie and Sylvie (inspired by Hay and de Janzé) should befriend a rather pompous 14-year old boy; or that his parents, disapproving of them, yet allow their young son to go to their dinner parties and on overnight visits to which they themselves have not been invited.

Later, too, Maud's story becomes a cliché of the white girl who rejects the institutional racism of her peers. The use made of Josslyn Hay's murder also feels rather unbelievable, a case of plot over likelihood.

So a book which does demand we suspend an awful lot of disbelief - but is ideal when you need something enjoyably uncomplicated and page-turning.