For the second time Minette Walters has chosen to follow Ruth Rendell's more recent Wexford novels in exploring public issues in the guise of a crime novel, but she does it rather more successfully. Rendell is inclined to find her subject matter in newspaper stories. So Harm Done deals with hidden domestic abuse, Road Rage is about environmental protest at motorway-building and Sinisola is primarily about ill-treated third-world servants. In consequence, the villains are so clearly marked out that there is little surprise about who has killed who and why. Even when Mrs Wexford is kidnapped things are signalled from a long way off.

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