A stranger's house

Some time ago I reviewed my friend Clare's first mystery novel, You think you know me. It's been a while but despite the best efforts of Korean speaking tablets, I finally got round to reading A stranger's house, Clare Chase's second crime novel, and the first in a series about former private detective, Nate Bastable, and his new assistant, Ruby Fawcett.

Ruby

Midsummer Common on a less sinister day

 finds herself unexpectedly looking for a new job and a place to live following a turbulent and sudden end to a relationship. Nate has a successful house-sitting business, and it seems the perfect option until Ruby can sort her life out. The new job in Cambridge seems simple enough, but then Ruby discovers that there's a very nasty side to her client, so it really shouldn't be a surprise when he is murdered. Ruby begins to get the feeling though that this murderer is rather close to home...

As regular readers of Bookhound will know, I'm a fan of books set in places I know well, and this addition to my already considerable series of "Death in Cambridge" is very welcome. The Cambridge setting is great and works really well as the backdrop to the mystery. This isn't crime at its grittiest, but it does expose another face to Cambridge that the casual visitor usually misses.

The story is told both from Ruby and from Nate's viewpoint, this could be potentially quite confusing, but Clare deals with it adroitly, I never forgot whose head I was in. And actually it was a really clever idea, as it revealed Nate's character more quickly and intimately than would have been the case had the whole story been told from Ruby's point of view. It also made a pleasant change from the usual "woman in danger" style novel, which tends to be carried completely by the central character.

The denouement was great fun and I'm very much looking forward to the next novel in the series, and the development of the relationship between Nate and Ruby.