A Case of Blackmail in Belgravia by Clara Benson

This was a detective story of sorts which started out as being absolutely unbelievable. A blackmailer, in with all the upper crust people in London has found out secrets of the most vicious kind and is blackmailing them for years. They find it a niggling worry only and pay him off. When someone decides to poison him during a dinner party, and he dies in the taxi being accompanied by one of the guests, she decides to involve her son by dragging him in a wheelbarrow and dumping him just outside his premises. The lady in question believes that with that she has washed her hands off the whole affair and blithely involving her son in such an escapade which could probably involve a jail sentence does not seem to bother her at all. In fact all of them are not bothered by the death, other than that it is a good thing for all, but they did not expect his man servant to follow up with the profession of blackmailing his master's clients. It gets ugly and a second murder takes place. Detectives in charge know that things are fishy, that none of the characters involved are disinterested but they cannot pin it on anyone. Freddy trying to save his mother knows that the first thing is to find the incriminating letters and then save all his mother's friends. All of them were oblivious to the crime of being part of a murder cover up and the story goes on in similar strain. Read over Christmas it was the ideal light hearted read. A free download from Amazon