London, 1990: Ivor Tescham, a rising young Conservative minister, is jeopardising his career with an affair with Hebe, a married woman as adventurous as he. On a whim, he decides to spice up their love-life by arranging a bizarre birthday present: she will be abducted and delivered to him bound and gagged. But his scheme goes haywire when the car crashes and Hebe is killed. The media assumes she was mistaken for the wife of a millionaire, and Ivor seems to have got off scot-free. But then a gun turns up in the car. If she was abducted with her consent, her friend Jane wonders, why is it there? Could this be more than just a birthday present gone wrong? Or is the bizarre fallout from the accident, which has affected an incredibly complicated chain of people, just a bizarre fallout?

An entertaining frolic through the corrupt world of high and low London society, The Birthday Present is particularly commendable for the skill with which nemesis gradually overtakes poor unsuspecting Ivor Tescham, until in the end, the pompous young wastrel actually gains the reader’s sympathy.