Dimensions
130 x 197 x 22mm
Tie-in with film directed by Julian Fellowes and starring Rupert Everett, Emily Watson and Tom Wilkinson
James Manning is perfectly content. He has a busy and successful life as a Magistrate in the city, a bright young thing of a wife, Jill and an idyllic home in the countryside. The only fly in the ointment as far as he can see is the 'Honbule', the Honourable William Stephen Fitzharding Bule, very much the country gentleman with too much time on his hands. Bule is making rather a habit of calling round his house.
When a young man is knocked off his bicycle and subsequently dies, James is sure that the culprit is Bule - after all, he saw a scratch on the car the day of the accident AND the car matches the description to a T. But events take a very unexpected turn when he discovers that the one driving the car that night was his very own wife, Jill. It takes only a short leap of the imagination to realise that Jill's friendship with the Honbule is not just platonic. This puts James in a quandary - should he lie to protect his wife, and what about his marriage?
Like Gosford Park and Snobs one of the main themes of this book is the mores and ethics of the upper class. James's feelings about his wife are complicated by 'what is expected' by society, and in the cover-up of the young man's death, there is a clash between class's loyalty and justice.
