Perfect holiday read (From The Oxford Times)

Perfect holiday read

8:10am Thursday 9th July 2009 in

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DEADLY SINS

Nicholas Coleridge (Orion, £12.99)

Perhaps Nicholas Coleridge would hate to be thought of as a ‘beach read’, but there it is. Apart from its physical size, which might make you fall foul of cabin baggage restrictions, Deadly Sins is the perfect novel to get stuck into on holiday.

Although hefty in weight, the novel is easy to digest.

It would make a perfect TV soap, based as it is on two warring families, who are more or less next-door neighbours: old money versus new money; tradition versus popular culture.

The deadly sins of the title include greed, envy, wrath and lust for starters.

Miles Straker is the guy who has it all: a society wife, four gorgeous children, a huge house in the country and a smart house in West London, plus a multi-national PR business with extensive connections.

Ross Clegg is the chap who has started from scratch. He’s a self-made millionaire, with a low-brow chain of food shops – bad enough, in Miles’ eyes – but then he buys the land next to Miles’s country estate.

Miles’s jealousy knows no bounds.

Even worse, the Clegg family are welcomed by the local gentry, and the children get on well. Too well, in one case, leading to an unexpected next-generation.

And Ross’s business is booming, as well as his daughter.

There is scandal, revenge, dishonesty aplenty — in the boardroom and the bedroom — as the feud between the two men takes its course. With particularly well-observed portraits of teenage angst, albeit somewhat far-fetched in extremis, there’s a good rollicking story to be had here.