I employ this thing called the Shovel List."

"A shovel...?"

"No. A Shovel List. It's more of a conceptual thing. It's a list of all the people and things i hate so much that i want to hit them in the face with a shovel."

Helen Walsh doesn't belive in fear - it's just a thing invented by men to get all the money and good jobs - and yet she's sinking. Her work as a private investigator has dried up, her flat has been repossessed and now some old demons have resurfaced.

Not least in the form of her charming but dodgy ex-boyfriend Jay Parker, who shows up with a missing-persons case. Money is tight - so tight, Helen's had to move back in with her elderly parents - and Jay is awash with cash. The missing person is Wayne Diffney, the "Wacky One" from boy band Laddz. He's vanished from his house in Mecry Close and it's vital that he's found - Laddz have a sell-out comeback gig in five days' time.

Things ended messily with Jay. And she's never going back there. Besides, she has a new boyfriend now, the very sexy detective Artie Delvin, and it's all going well, even though his ex-wife isn't quite "ex" enough and his teenage son hates her. But reappearance of Jay is stirring up all kinds of stuff she thought she'd left behind.

Playing by her own rules, Helen is drawn into a dark and glamorous world, where her worst enemy is her own head and where increasingly the only person she feels connected to is Wayne, a man she's never even met.

Utterly compelling moving and very very funny, The Mystery of Mercy Close is unlike any novel you've ever read and Helen Walsh - courageous, vulnerable and wasp-tongued - is the perfect heroine for our times.