Jill Hetherington

The first professional female detective in British fiction, Mrs Gladden, uses similar methods to her male counterparts - she enters scenes of crime incognito, tracking down killers while trying to conceal her own tracks and her identity from others. But little is revealed about Mrs Gladden herself, and her personal circumstances remain a mystery.

In the summer of 1924 a young poet shot himself at an English country house party. In 1999, 98-year-old Grace Bradley, onetime housemaid at Riverton, is visited by a director making a film about the poet's suicide. Gradually Grace remembers the truth about that fateful night. Richard & Judy Bookclub