...shaky eggs and bodhrans and spoons and any other instrument not expensive enough for them. Wise up, people.

I've just finished a mystery, "The Cipher Garden, A Lake District Mystery" by Martin Edwards. At the heart of the plot are two women, about 38, and best friends. Roz and Bel. They live and work in the valley where they've been all their lives. One day Bel comes home to her cottage and finds the landscaper, Warren, dead (in pieces) in the garden. He's been scythed to death with his own scythe! The police were baffled, and it's now a cold case.

1. Warren was quite the lad. He had boffed both Roz and Bel in high school.

2. Before his death Warren was boffing the wife of his business partner, Peter.

3. Peter is now boffing Tina, Warren's widow.

4. Tina has a son, Sam. We can't tell you who Sam's boffing, because not even Sam knows their names.

5. Sam's sister, Vicky was it? isn't boffing anybody. As the only person in the valley not in an illicit relationship, she feels deep shame. She's in love with Oliver, the chef.

6. Oliver's the chef, and he's shacked up with Roz, the restaurant owner. But it's not that simple...

7. Roz's friend Bel is married (I guess) to Chris. Chris is bisexual and had run off with Jason, the old chef.

8. Chris had also been boffing the Detective Sergeant, but that's old news. Or is it?

9. The DS works with the DI, Hannah, who's shacked up with Mark. She's getting tired of him, being attracted to our protagonist, Daniel.

10. Daniel got tired of being rich and famous and has moved to the country. (He's a noted TV historian.) He's shacked up with Miranda, but he's getting tired of her.

11. Will Daniel and Hannan detach from their present boffees and link up? The suspense is not killing me.

Everybody agrees that society is very permissive now and none of this is really important. Until somebody's dead. (Anybody who reads a paper can see the same things happening in the real world.)

These People Need Something To Do. If young Sam had said to himself, "I think I'll take my shakey egg down to the folk club rather than drink beer and do meth," he would have been a lot better off. If Daniel had decided to take up the bodhran rather than seduce his dead father's former partner, he would be better off. There is a chance that Sam and Dan might make some real friends and even might start acting intelligently. Once in a while.

That's what I think.