"Mine" by J L Butler

It is a little difficult writing a murder mystery from the point of view of the protagonist who is an unreliable narrator. Agatha Christie paved the way. The Girl on the Train used the device of an alcoholic narrator who had blackouts. Mine uses a hot-shot lawyer whose blackout at the critical moment is due to bipolar syndrome (mixed with alcohol).

In brief: hot-shot divorce lawyer falls for male client, cue really rather sexy scenes. Then client, owner of a hedge fund managing a billion dollars, hooks back up with wife while lawyer tails him. Wife then disappears. Did hedge fund manager do it or lawyer during a bipolar blackout? And what about the blackmailing PhD student living in the flat below the lawyer?

A well-paced thriller. The ending is traditional but you're ninety per cent of the way through by then. And, as well as the sex bits, there are some great lines:

• "The sound of your shoes against the cobbles tricked you into thinking you were not alone." (C 4)
• "Spitalfields was London in microcosm, a strange organic meld of the ancient and the space age, jagged silver-and-glass rocket ships pointing to the heavens, next to crumbled soot-stained tenements, unchanged since the Ripper stalked through the fog." (C 4)
• "A new dress that sucked me in a ll the right places." (C 8)
• "I had joined the cast of a drama I had not auditioned for, and I did not like my part." (C 17)
• "I tried to zone out, my eyes not quite focusing on the London buildings and evening lights - smears of red-and-white in the rain-speckled glass - that sped past. The coloured patterns were hypnotic; after a while, though, they seemed to conspire with the confusion of thoughts in my head to make me feel sick." (C 25)
• "A type-A Icarus who thought she was too good for her hometown." (C 42)

Good stuff. April 2019; 422 pages