I whipped through Mark Edwards’ thriller The Wasp Trap in a couple sittings (helped along by two storm days), but it wasn’t really because the book was anything particularly special.

Twenty-five years ago, Professor Sebastian Marlowe assembled his “revolutionaries”, six 20-somethings with particular skills, and invited them to come to Thornwood, a stately country manor, to develop a dating app based on years of his own research.

At the end of the summer, after a party-gone-wrong, the six were shipped off to their homes in various parts of England and with the exception of Theo and Georgina, who had fallen in love and subsequently married, they don’t speak to each other until after Marlow has died and Theo and Georgina invite them to a dinner party in their former employer’s honour.

This is one of those locked room mysteries where you are meant to be suspicious of everyone’s motives. The story is mostly told through Will’s eyes. He’d been hired to write the web site’s copy, so it makes sense that he’s the observant one, the one who tries to piece things together when things go sideways. Which they do.

Once all the gang’s back together, someone in the house turns out not to be who they said they were…well, more than one someone, actually. Suddenly, the revolutionaries find themselves unwilling participants in a deadly game of “tell me your secret”.

The Wasp Trap toggles between the summer at Thornwood and the present day and reveals to the reader that, Lily, the genius of the group was also working on a separate project, an app who could figure out whether or not someone is a psychopath. As Will notes when Lily broaches the idea

The genius. The lothario. The salesman. The affluent couple, the joker and the local girl. Finally me, the wordsmith, whose role was to write it all down.

If any of us were a psychopath, I already had a good idea who it would be.

This is one of those books that will appeal to a lot of readers. It’s fast-paced, there are clearly stakes, lots of twists and cliffhangers that will make you turn the pages. It was just okay for me, but that’s just me. I didn’t really care for any of the characters that much and I wasn’t a huge fan of the ending.

Mileage will definitely vary.