The In Crowd by Charlotte Vassell Narrator: Damian Lynch, Genevieve Gaunt
Series: Detective Inspector Caius Beauchamp #2
Published by Random House Audio on August 6, 2024
Source: Purchased
Genres: Mystery
Length: 10 hrs 41 mins
Pages: 432
Format: Audiobook
Add on Goodreads
Early one morning, a men’s rowing team discovers a body floating face down in the Thames. Many years before, the chief executive of a clothing manufacturer walked off with a multi-million dollar corporate retirement fund and disappeared without a trace. Now, the discovery of this body has reopened that cold case.
Meanwhile, Detective Inspector Caius Beauchamp has his own evening at the theater upended by the discovery of a dead body just a few seats away. Two decades ago, Eliza Chapel, a fourteen-year-old student at a girls boarding school in Cornwall, disappeared in the middle of the night under dubious circumstances. A second body and a second cold case reopened.
As DI Caius Beauchamp—along with his associates Matt Chung and Amy Noakes—investigates these parallel missing persons cases, he finds himself ensnared in the unexpected political machinations of a duke-in-waiting. This is yet another masterful mystery from Charlotte Vassell that is every bit as pointed as it is poignant.
I wish I had read The Other Half, the first in the Detective Inspector Caius Beauchamp series, before picking up The In Crowd. Not that The In Crowd doesn’t work as a stand-alone, it does, but Caius is a full, rich character, the kind you appreciate more the more time you spend with them. His interactions with his staff, Matt Chung and Amy Noakes, are well done, too. I also feel like some of the other characters had parts in the first case that I missed.
This time around, Caius is working on two cases: the death of a woman who had been the girlfriend of a missing man suspected of stealing pension fund assets and the disappearance of a girl from boarding school years ago. The mysteries are complex and and the twists were incorporated well, and I liked how certain things pulled together. Honestly, though, it’s Caius himself that would make me come back to the series.
About Charlotte Vassell
Charlotte’s debut novel The Other Half was longlisted for the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger in 2024. The In Crowd, the second in the DI Caius Beauchamp series won Best Novel in the 2025 Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allen Poe Awards.
Charlotte studied History at the University of Liverpool and completed a Master’s in Art History at SOAS before training as an actor at Drama Studio London. Other than treading the boards Charlotte has also worked in advertising, in executive search, and in a gentlemen’s hatters.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges: