Not for insomniacs

In Sybille Bedford’s book, Jigsaw, a woman who is suffering from insomnia asks for books. ‘Oh, not real books, I couldn’t look at those. Detective stories only.’ So Sayers’ Wimseyland and Christie’s Poirot are required. How would she get on today? Ruth Rendell and P. D James would do excellently but none of these books would do at all: they are all thrillers, packed with blood, murder and mayhem, a nightmare diet. No time for quiet little grey cells to be working away here. Charles Maclean’s Home Before Dark is a particularly disturbing example of the genre.

When Sophie Lister, an American girl studying in Florence, is brutally murdered, Superintendent Morelli believes the murderer got into her life by computer, but after a year he has made no progress. Her father, Ed, exasperated by the delay and a rich man who can make money talk very loud, comes over from the States.