Astrid Bell lives with a group of housemates in a big house in Hackney. Cycling home one summer day - she works as a cycle courier - she gets knocked off her bike by one of her neighbours, an elderly woman, who accidentally opens her car door without looking. The following morning the woman's dead body is found dumped by the rubbish.

A few days later Astrid goes on a courier job to collect a package from Highgate, to find no one at home. She peers through the letterbox and glimpses what looks like the arm of a body. Affirmative action is needed, so she breaks into the house by hurling her bike through a window. This time the dead woman, who was rich and beautiful, has had her face slashed.

The police can't figure out what, apart from Astrid Bell being at or near the scene of the crime, could connect the two murders; they need to interview all seven housemates and everyone's dirty linen starts tumbling out.

This is a slick and neatly-constructed whodunnit, and the 10th by husbandand-wife team Nicci French, who specialise in gutsy heroines who like a bit of rough, decent if plodding coppers and extremely nasty killers. You discover quite early on who did it but that's intentional. It's how and why they did it that's so clever..

Synopsis by Foyles.co.uk
Young and athletic, London cycle courier Astrid Bell is bad luck - for other people. First Astrid's neighbour Peggy Farrell accidentally knocks her off her bike - and not long after is found bludgeoned to death. Then a few days later, Astrid is asked to pick up a package from a wealthy woman called Ingrid de Soto, only to find the client murdered in the hall of her luxurious home. For the police it's more than coincidence. For Astrid and her six housemates it's the beginning of a nightmare: suspicious glances, bitter accusations, fallings out and a growing fear that the worst is yet to come ...Because if it's true that bad luck comes in threes - who will be the next to die?

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