Separate lies - Nigel Balchin

James Manning is perfectly content. He has a busy and successful life as a magistrate in the city, a bright young thing of a wife, Jill, and an idyllic home in the countryside. The only fly in the ointment as far as he can see is the 'HonBule' - the Honourable William Stephen Fitzharding Bule, very much the country gentleman with too much time on his hands.

When a young man is knocked off his bicycle and subsequently dies, James is sure that the culprit is Bule - after all, he saw a scratch on the car the day of the accident AND the car matches the description to a T. But events take an unexpected turn when he discovers that the person driving the car that night was his own wife, Jill. It takes only a short leap of imagination to realise that Jill's friendship with the HonBule is not just platonic. This puts James in a quandary - should he lie to protect his wife, and what about his marriage?

Like GOSFORD PARK and SNOBS, one of the main themes of this book is the mores and ethics of the upper classes. James's feelings about his wife are complicated by 'what is expected', and in the cover-up of the young man's death there is a clash between class loyalty and justice.