With her new charity foundation to support young people to live and study in New York City, Pomona Afton needs to wheedle money out of prospective donors. She has money, but not enough to buy a city building and give it away. POMONA AFTON CAN TOTALLY CATCH A KILLER is the second book following the young socialite. She recently managed to solve the murder of her grandmother in the family’s private apartments. Can she avert the destruction of her foundation when a donor is killed? The suspect list at her first party is long.

I totally enjoyed the first story (the language is catching), which showed mid-twenties Pom bereft of her trust fund while the murder was under investigation. She had to stay with friends, but nobody wanted to know her in case, you know, poverty and suspicion were catching. A former nanny gave her use of an apartment, and she hit it off with her now- boyfriend Gabe, a high-school history teacher. That was tremendous fun, seeing Pom adapt and fall apart and put her life back together again. In the new adventure, though, she’s back to being spoiled, as her family’s hotel empire, her pal’s private island, and the company jet assuage any guilt she feels for hosting a gala where someone died. To be fair, Conrad Phlume was already quite toxic, and murder mystery fans could spot early that he was likely not to make it to the end of the evening.

Pomona cares more about her hair, clothes and food than about her boyfriend or cat. Yes, she stopped growing on me. She is trying to mature, but has not been used to responsibility or organisation (she has people to organise her new bakery and her life), so it’s taking time. Her best friends all turn out to be frenemies, no surprise, but there isn’t anyone else in her limited social circle, limited to the wealthy. And Gabe, charming as he is, shivers at the world she inhabits, the fake friends, the obsession with better clothes and homes. Her parents are snide about his upbringing. I found it hard to see why he would stay with her, other than the obvious.

Maybe next time Pom will be stranded on a desert island and really rough it. I don’t know how she’d survive without clubbing, and I do not think that friends who drug her on the dance floor are friends she ought to keep. If you want to get a breath of this rarified air, try POMONA AFTON CAN TOTALLY CATCH A KILLER by Bellamy Rose. You don’t need to read the first book first, but I recommend you do. So many references are made to that case that the outcome won’t be a surprise if you read it later. This lively amateur sleuth story makes a change from the small-town settings.