Julian Fellowes’s mystery explores the grand houses and spectacular lives of the aristocrats at a time when the class system still determined every social interaction.

Damien Baxter, a millionaire, is dying, so he summons the unnamed narrator, an old enemy once a dear friend, to find the heir that an anonymous letter claims he fathered. When the men met at Cambridge, Baxter was an outsider who said “pleased to meet you” rather than “how d’you do” and the upper-class narrator befriended him and guided him around “the season” of 1968. But Baxter’s looks and charm quickly made him the debs’ delight and resulted in a transgression that ended the pair’s friendship.

The possible debutantes are narrowed down to five who have children of the right age, and the narrator meets each woman in turn. The ways their lives have changed reflect the bursting bubble of upper-class privilege, something the narrator laments.

As he searches for Baxter’s heir, we glimpse the country piles and wild parties at which the pair spent their youth, while Fellowes’s narrative reveals the root of the narrator’s rancour and explores shifting class definitions with style and insight.

The reviews “It arrives equipped with two central puzzles, each sufficient to keep one hoovering up the pages.

The Sunday Times “And no one writes as entertainingly about the English class system (which despite all you’ve read is still apparently alive and kicking) than Fellowes.”

The Guardian The author Fellowes was born in 1949 in Cairo, to the diplomat Peregrine Fellowes and his first wife. Julian inherited the title of Lord of the Manor of Tattershall from his father. He was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and afterwards embarked on an acting career. His greatest Hollywood success was his screenplay for Gosford Park, for which he won an Oscar in 2002.

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