This is the kind of hand bag book that can be read in a couple of sittings. It's an odd story but it's just about credible.

Our heroine Samantha is a gnat's nadger away from being made the youngest partner in one of London's most prestigious law firms when disaster strikes.

Mummy is a lawyer and has standards! Samanatha is a Cambridge graduate who has given her life to the law: she works all the hours God sends, she lives in a moil as we used to say. Her private life is a mess.

The she finds a document buried somewhere on her seriously untidy desk that has passed its sell by date and costs the firm £50 million.

This story breaks the day before she is about to be announced as the new partner in the firm.

She runs away: a tragi comic event in itself. She ends up knocking on the door of a nouveau riche couple in the middle of nowhere looking for directions. They think she's the new live in chief cook and bottle washer.

Samantha wakes up the next morning only to be treated as, well, the new live in chief cook and bottle washer!!! There's a slight snag: Samantha has no idea how to cook or even to wash a bottle. What's worse is that as she talked her way into the job she told stories of Michelin Star menus and expertise ... her own. It was all lies.

Breakfast arrives and making a pot of tea is a major challenge. It goes on like this for a while and she gets away with it: it costs her hundreds of pounds to replace ruined washing, to order haute cuisine takeaways and so on.

Nat the gardener wanders in to the middle of this and fairly quickly realises that all is not what it seems. You can guess what eventually happens in this department as he is smart enough, handome enough, has a good physique and is friendly. Less pass over that part, then.

Nat's mother, on the other hand, is a teasure: she teaches Samantha how to cook and wash bottles. She is a quick learner and after a month or so is able to fool her employers quite handsomely.

In the meantime, what about the law career? It's on hold. No one knows where she is and she doesn't tell them. Life in the village improves and Nat owns the pub! She becomes something of a fixture, part of the social scene.

If you ever listen to The Archers on BBC Radio 4 you might recognise the Linda Snell of this book: the nouveau riche madam of the house. What a clot! Money arrives, taste doesn't. Coffee mornings, doing the right things, going to the right places but knowing the value of nothing. All de rigeur!

This a good rattling yarn with lots of humour and some good characterisations. A neice arrives, she's a pain. The lawy beckons again. Nat is something to mull over. It all comes to a head when Samantha works out what really happened to her and uncovers a crime: she was to fall guy and that is why she had to go.

How she tries to unravel the plot is both sad and amusing but she decides to accept the newly offered partnership after all. Linda Snell is in her element now as the news breaks and the press descends on the house: a top London lawyer as her maid. Well, who aong her friends could compete with that? It certainly boosts the attendance at her garden party!

The end of the book is a farce: lawyer or not, Nat or not, live in maid or not? You can guess at all three endings and maybe there's a fourth. I'm not telling.

Worth a read if you're into handbag books. Nice picture of a pretty author on the inside cover of the book too ... the picture in the book is a little better!

I have just entered a sweep stake to be named in Sophie's next novel. Since I'm as vain as the next man, I shouldn't tell you how to enter should I. Just click on the link I just gave and work your way to Sophie's home page.

Duncan Williamson
28th May 2006