The nail-polished finger of suspicion

T asmina Perry has written on celebrity and style for many magazines including Marie-Claire, Glamour and Heat and was most recently deputy editor of In Style magazine. Armed with such glitzy credentials, she gives the reader a peek into the fabulous lives of the rich and famous and in her first novel highlights the lives of London's paparazzi darlings: the fictitious Balcon sisters.

The plot follows the story of four famous sisters who all have fabulous high profile careers but who, as we discover in the Prologue, become suspects for murder when their father Lord Balcon is found dead after a Christmas Eve family party. The narrative then begins 10 months before the incident, leading the reader through the lives of the four glamorous sisters: Venetia the interior designer, Cate the glossy magazine editor, Camilla the rising politician and Serena the beautiful actress. The four sisters lead very different lives but are still very close to one another.

The four Balcon sisters have everything - wealth, designer labels, dazzling careers and men falling at their feet - but when their aristocratic and tyrannical father is murdered, dark family secrets come back to haunt them as the finger of suspicion is pointed towards his daughters.

The mystery elements in Daddy's Girls are woven into a complex tale where each daughter has a possible motive for committing the murder. Yet, unlike typical whodunit novels, the investigation of the crime is not carried out by a detective. Instead, Perry leaves it to the reader to deduce the identity of the perpetrator of the crime. In this way, the story line keeps you guessing the whole way through. The secluded English country house where the murder takes place in the middle of the night is also a key element of the murder mystery genre.

Daddy's Girls is a book of secrets, lies, affairs, back-stabbing, scandal and glamour set in the world of sophisticated women's magazines, interior design, politics and showbiz. These four women constantly play out their lives under the watchful eye of the public, but beneath the fancy façade of this family lies a secret that threatens to destroy them all.

Daddy's Girls is a novel for anybody who likes to read about the scandalous lives of the rich and famous. On another level, the story proves that all the wealth and privilege in the world cannot protect you from pain and heartache.

The girls' achievements cannot buy their father's love as none of the sisters can ever impress the nasty domineering patriarch enough.

Each chapter is narrated by a different daughter or Lord Balcon himself, a technique which allows us to see both the victim's and the suspects' point of view. Moreover, the multiple narrative consists of more than one chain of events as the story is built around the separate lives of the four sisters. However, Ms Perry fails to fully develop the characters and, at times, the dialogue between the novel's characters tends to be unconvincing, making their portrayal unrealistic. The story is also far-fetched in that the sisters are depicted as being so beautiful, so envied by all, desired by everyone, with flawless taste and the best at everything they do. Still, Ms Perry does keep our interest in the plot in spite of suspension of disbelief and, indeed, the very length of the novel.

From Manhattan, Mustique and Megeve to Luxor, Milan and Cannes, Ms Perry creates a world of family dynamics, power and corruption among London's socialites. Daddy's Girls is a murder mystery story which possesses qualities of other genres - romance, sex, sensation, family drama and chick lit, making it an interesting read when you're loafing around in your bikini.

• Ms Montanaro is a postgraduate student at the University of Edinburgh. She is researching for a PhD on Psychoanalysis and British Surrealism.

• A review copy of this title was supplied by Agenda Bookshop.