Freeze My Margarita sees Sam Jones, sculptor and amateur sleuth, embroiled in the world of theatre. She's invited to work on the set for a play and sure enough, before too long people are dying.

Sam Jones is a wonderful creation, one of the strongest characters in crime fiction today. She is intelligent, self-confident, independent and sexy yet with a touch of vulnerability. A character skillfully crafted to appeal to almost all straight male readers.

In this story, Sam is persuaded to allow her mobiles to be used for a stage production of A Midsummer Night's Dream (or "the Dream" as I am now unable to avoid calling it). The cast and crew provide a feast of interactions, most bitchy. There are some most dreadful luvies there, and this is the main attraction of the book. These people are great fun.

The book begins at a London BDSM club; this has little to do with the plot, it's just a place to introduce characters. A blatant excuse to include a mildly kinky scene, but who's complaining?

The first corpse takes a surprisingly long time to appear - no body on the first page here. For the first few chapters, Henderson sets the scene whilst cleverly throwing in a number of hints that ring alarm bells with the reader. You keep expecting someone to die within the next few pages, only to be proved wrong. When the body does finally surface you just know that it isn't going to be the last.

The only real problem with this book is that Henderson does let her research show rather heavily. There are large chunks of exposition about how the theatre works that are rather clumsy (although I confess that I found them fascinating).

All told, more clues and red herrings than you can count. Henderson knows her readers - she knows the things that will make you go "Aha!" and sprinkles them liberally throughout the text.

If you're looking for something heavy with deep psychological insights or painfully accurate police procedural then this is the wrong book. If you're looking for a well-told, witty yarn then Freeze My Margarita is crime at its coolest.