Lucy's life is in flux. She left a controlling manipulative husband for Longborough and a part-time job in the library. Her mother's estate provided enough money to buy a house which she runs as a Bed & Breakfast and where she entertains a part-time lover.

Toronto beckons and Lucy answers. The chance to be her own boss with her own detective agency is too good to refuse and, before too many pages turn, Lucy takes on her first client.

Those of you who read P.D. James must recognize a familiar scenario, but times and circumstances have changed since the early 70s when James wrote her novel. No-one tells Lucy private sleuthing is an unsuitable job for a woman. Her landlord, Peter Tse, merely objects that she knows nothing about detecting. Her cousin would hardly have served as a mentor in any case; the general consensus being that David Trimble was a bad detective who squandered his fees on the horses.

The story follows a number of plot lines. Lucy's first job is to follow an agoraphobic housewife on her weekly night out. Her cousin's lawyer, Wally Buncombe, although skeptical about her abilities as a detective, nevertheless refers her to a client who needs to locate a child missing since 1940. On top of all that, there is the death of her cousin which Lucy is beginning to regard as suspicious after his office is ransacked and she finds a secret file in his computer.

While gumshoe Lucy travels back and forth to Longborough in search of information about the missing boy, Wright's other equally well-drawn characters help move the story along at a brisk pace. In the cause of detecting, she learns the ins and outs of horse racing , takes a new lover and even finds time for a flying trip to an English boys' school.

There are no corpses except Trimble's. Wright has chosen to make this an old-fashioned puzzle mystery in a modern setting. I found the conclusion just a bit too tame and tidy but in the end, forgivable, because it was such a jolly romp getting there.