A whodunnit in the best blood-tingling tradition, which keeps the reader gasping and guessing till the last page.

Although Julian Prentice is a small-time crook, his theft of a car hardly seems to warrant someone’s very deliberate attempt to kill him on the day he is released from prison.

The final roll-call of suspects comes to six, with six apparently foolproof alibis. Yet someone is lying. It falls to Detective-Superintendent Simon Manton to work out who …