Presumably Catton's defenders would argue that it hardly matters that the mystery is hopelessly cluttered and not all that mysterious. This, they would argue, is a new literary classic that cleverly plays with the expectations of the detective genre — as with all great pieces of literature, what really counts is not what happens but the brilliant character studies you get along the way. 

The trouble is that these studies just aren't that brilliant. Catton introduces a large cast and gives each one his turn in the limelight, yet she never manages to make you really care about the fate of any of them.

It often feels as if she is merely showing you scenes rather than allowing you fully to inhabit the characters and feel their pain and fears. The sense of distance isn't helped by the smugly superior voice of her omniscient narrator, who makes asides in a conspiratorial "we" and often seems to be laughing at the characters' confusion.

 It is only towards the very end of the novel, when we flash back to the dramatic events which serve as a catalyst for everything that follows, that Catton creates moments of real terror and pathos. But by this point proof of her ability to create emotionally gripping scenes is merely exasperating — where did it go for the previous 700 pages?

Holding the book together is an astrological framework, with each chapter named after a particular planetary position and the events loosely dictated by whatever the Sun in Jupiter or the Moon in Taurus is meant to foretell. 

Catton explained in a recent interview that she was interested in exploring the idea of predetermination, but also just wanted to have "the pleasure of having a complex structure to fiddle and play with". The result is just as pointlessly self-indulgent as that pronouncement sounds — her astrological asides never seem to serve any greater purpose than to remind you how clever the author is meant to be.

"There is no truth exect truth in relation, and heavenly relation is composed of wheels in motion, tilting axes, turning dials. It is a clockwork orchestration that alters every minute, never repeating, never still," the narrator grandly declares. 

It sounds pretty, but sadly the book remains just that — a clockwork orchestration of characters that Catton has painstakingly put together but failed to bring to life. If you want to lose yourself in a book you can use as a doorstop, Tolstoy's your man; if you want a good mystery, stick to Poirot.