Left to myself I doubt that I would have bought this book, by an author I didn't know, with a £10 cover price for the paperback and a storyline about the search for a stuffed bird. It was my daughter who passed it on to me. "Go on," she said, "I know you'll enjoy it." I did.
I have just one quibble and that's that the characterisation is not first class. Banks and his mistress came across well and I felt that I could empathise with them, understand their actions, but in the later story I felt that more could have been made of the characters. Fitzgerald seemed to be a shadowy figure and I didn't actually warm to him at all. Having said that, it detracts only slightly from what amounts to a very good read.