Other people's rules

A magnificent, completely absorbing novel, revolving around a high society court case.

A British Dominic Dunne. A beautiful, tempestuous girl disappears from her family's Scottish estate after her brilliant birthday ball.

Neither she nor her body are discovered. Her parents -- the icon and celebrated pop star, Michael Gresham, and his wife, a stylish American heiress -- employ private detectives and offer rewards but find nothing, until a local serial killer confesses to the murder.

In the neighbouring estate lives Ivar Gatehouse, government spokesman in the House of Lords, famous for his wealth, ancient title and social brilliance, with his fragile painter wife and four near adult children.

Both familes live in almost feudal splendour. Celebrated in Hello! and society pages, their worlds are detached, above, different from ours: they live according to other people's rules.

But twenty years later, Earl Gatehouse is in Dumfries County Court on trial for murder and the witness on whom the Crown's case will rely is Lucy Diamond, a one-time friend of his youngest daughter, an outsider to their privileged world, who had come to stay on the summer of the birthday ball.