A Beginner's Guide to Murder

n the middle of winter, a cold, frightened teenager with only a towel around her shoulders for warmth crashes through the door of a coffee bar. Meg, Daphne and Grace are strangers to each other, having a casual and rather stilted coffee after their Pilates class (keeping death at bay, as they describe it).

While the teenager hides in the toilet, a hideous toad-like man comes looking for her. He says he is looking for his 'daughter' and, although they are old and therefore ignored, these ladies are astute, and they don't believe a word he says. They decide to band together to come to the aid of young Nina against what turns out to be a well-organised and depraved set-up that will stop at nothing to get the girl back. So a murder plot is hatched to get rid of the toad man and to put a stop to his evil empire.

The gang of three decide to hire assassins to do the actual dirty work and they contact an unlikely couple, Clara and her brother Greg, through Des, Daphne’s jailbird friend. For me, Clara and Greg were flimsily written comic characters that might as well not have been there. Later in the story Meg meets Gordon, an impressive homeless man who agrees to lend a hand. Both Des and Gordon are much more interesting and useful characters than the two paid assassins and they both deserve more development.

A Beginner’s Guide to Murder is a curate's egg of a book that doesn't quite live up to its title as the murder element is very much in the background. The main theme deals with the treatment of women at the hands of bad men and in particular the treatment of the old and vulnerable as well as the young and vulnerable. It's told through the eyes of four women: Meg, Daphne and Grace, all elderly, and the much younger Nina. The storytelling passes between them – a device I enjoy – and this works well here.

Meg, Daphne and Grace are single, elderly women with a lifetime of stories of deprivation and heartache – usually at the hands of men. Nina has been let down by her father, then her mother and then by the care system.  She describes herself as a 'looked after' child with not much looking after involved.

There is nothing particularly realistic about this story. Three such disparate women who just happen to be having coffee together when an unknown and desperate young woman bursts in on them is highly unlikely ... but I was willing to go along with it as they are very endearing characters. The interesting and gratifying part of the book is how, through danger and adversity, the three women become close friends who are gradually willing to disclose the horrors of their individual pasts.

This book seems to be riding on the coat tails of several recently published books featuring the elderly with the word murder in the title. But for all its faults as a crime book, A Beginner’s Guide to Murder has some interesting things to say about the hidden lives of elderly women and there is a poignancy to the catharsis they all achieve through helping a young woman at the beginning of her adult life. So although the book doesn’t live up to its title, it is an enjoyable, if far-fetched, romp.