Yes, minister, it’s a murder!

THE DIVISION BELL MYSTERY

(British Library £8.99) IF WRITING from experience is a good rule for novelists, Ellen Wilkinson scores high marks for her direct knowledge.

As one of the first female cabinet ministers, she brings an easy familiarity with Westminster to her only crime novel.

A high- level financial operator, a friend of the Home Secretary, is murdered in The House of Commons. As a parliamentary private secretary, it falls to Robert West to help the police find the culprit while protecting the government from politically explosive revelations.

Further complications arise when West becomes infatuated with the victim’s glamorous daughter, who surely knows more than she is letting on.

What is striking is how little Parliament has changed since first publication close on 90 years ago.

The leading characters would feel at home in the present corridors of power.

Whether the modern crop would measure up to Wilkinson’s standards of political probity is another matter entirely.