A Private Business by Barbara Nadel

Summary

In an area of London that has a tradition of welcoming immigrants… Well, perhaps more a case of accepting them into the already mixed traditions that years of immigration have produced. Into the East End had come the persecuted and dispossessed of the world; Jews fleeing the Nazis, Irish fleeing famine, Huguenots fleeing religious oppression. Now it was Pakistanis and Muslims who joined the mix. So it was really no surprise that Jewish Len Blatt took up with and married Maria Peters, offspring of an Irish Catholic mother. All very well until he died.

The problem Maria had then was she thought she was being stalked. That’s how she became involved with Lee Arnold, and he had just become involved with Mumtaz Hakim. Nothing untoward was happening between a Muslim widow and a dyed-in-the-wool atheist, theirs was a professional relationship. His relationship with DI Violet Collins was a bit more complicated, as was his relationship with his mother and his wayward brother, Roy Arnold. Sorting out a stalker was going to be easy by comparison – and lucrative.

Flashers, fantasists, con-men, pushy relatives and police are all part of a puzzle that is only confounded when a best friend, Betty Muller, adds religion to the mix. No peace for the wicked, so they say.