Lesley Manville is our lead character, Susan Ryeland. Susan is a book editor at a small publisher, who are responsible for the Atticus Pünd stories - a hugely successful series of whodunits written by Alan Conway (Conleth Hill). Just as her company is about to be bought out by a major publishing house, she receives the latest Pünd manuscript ... minus the last chapter. And the author dies, under dubious circumstances.

Susan runs off in pursuit of the final chapter and possibly also the cause of the author's death. The fact that Conway is a truly wretched human being whose favourite past-time is hurting people means that Susan has a huge number of suspects to contend with. Interleaved with this (pun intended), we see considerable chunks of the most recent Pünd novel - with Atticus Pünd played by Tim McMullan. The visual style is slightly different, and the writing becomes noticeably more clichéd ...

The novel this was based on was by Anthony Horowitz, who wrote and directed nearly all of "Foyle's War," one of the best British mystery series ever made - so I was immediately on board.

The story-within-a-story structure plays out surprisingly well. I was mildly frustrated by the big final denouement: I didn't think she would be that stupid, especially after reading so many murder mysteries. Somebody - Horowitz presumably - succumbed to the "need" for a particular kind of dramatic ending that didn't quite fit. But for the most part it's very well constructed.