Imagine the setting circa 1960. Mrs Christie has a sharp eye for contemporary fashions (hairstyles like birds nests, thick jumpers worn for dinner) and mores (coffee bars, flower shops that sell one bloom in masses of maidenhair). Instead of Poirot and Miss Marple, we have Mrs Oliver and Mrs Dane Calthrop (I love the way she mixed and matched detectives). The central character, Mark Easterbrook, is a serious, bookish man who stumbles across some odd happenings and begins to add two and two when he bumps into an old friend, now a forensic pathologist. The central 'case' is seen from many angles (and more than one narrator), and its elements are only linked by the mysterious phrase 'the pale horse'. It turns out to be a former pub now inhabited by three eccentric ladies of a certain age who are only too happy to tell you about their hobby - black magic. Can they possibly be linked to a list of names whose owners turn out to be rather dead? Easterbrook and a picture restorer called Ginger are determined to find out. Their search leads them from mansion flats to boarding houses to dusty offices in Birmingham to draughty country vicarages. Now read on!
