I have decided that a Roomba probably would not work for us — our house is full of Afghan and Pakistani rugs with fringed ends. Also, the cats probably would not like it. Watson would eventually decide to ignore it, as he does the normal vacuum cleaner, but Isobel would freak. The natural habitat of the Roomba is a sparsely furnished condo with wall-to-wall carpets, where the owners are out all day, and that is the opposite of our house.

I haven’t looked at anything by Martha Grimes for at least twenty years; I read about eight of them back in the 90s, and abruptly stopped when I realized that I could not stand another dose of Melrose Plant — I have met a couple of people a bit like that over the years, and they were indeed intolerable. But Martha Grimes also put very odd child characters in her books, and I did not like them, either. The whole gestalt was a bit twee. Except Cyril the cat.