Miss Marple once reflected that ‘One does see so much evil in a village’. But even the famously unflappable sleuth would surely have raised an eyebrow at the goings on in the usually somnolent village of Barbourough. Here, teenage friends and Agatha Christie fans, Kerry and Annie, are called upon to investigate a diabolical murder, after their frankly unpleasant classmate, Selena, becomes possibly the only person in history to have been suffocated with a menstrual cup. A laugh-out-loud girl-powered whodunnit awaits in Murder on a School Night by Kate Weston.

Although Kerry and Annie are considered to be ‘less cool than a tabard-wearing dinner lady,’ Annie has long nurtured hopes of getting in with Les Populaires, an Insta-fabulous clique headed by Heather, the most stylish girl at school.

Used to being shunned, the friends are thoroughly discombobulated when Heather not only acknowledges their existence but also shares some distressing personal information. Somebody is impersonating her dead father, having created an Instagram account in order to bombard her with family photos and sinister DMs, along the lines of ‘Secrets catch up with you in the end, and if secrets don’t, I will.’

Based on her viewing of five and a half episodes of CSI, Annie is convinced they can solve the mystery, and their plans to commit to a sophisticated sixth-form life go out the window as they’re plunged instead into a world of mendacity, menace, and menstrual murder.

A hilarious and rip-roaring read, Weston has some taboo-busting fun. Kerry’s sexually liberated mother pops in for some mortifying cameo moments but her progressive parenting has helped instil strong feminist values, much in evidence as the girls take on bumbling sexist police officers and old-school misogyny, all while dealing with an increasingly desperate killer (the body count rises and even the humble tampon becomes an accessory to murder)

The perfect holiday read.

Murder on a School Night by Kate Weston is published by Electric Monkey, 336 pages.