The Mystery of Mercy Close

"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 believe 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 - the target: Wayne Diffney, the ''Wacky One'' from boyband Laddz..
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.