A review by gwyneira
The Birthday Present by Barbara Vine

3.0

I don't think this is one of Vine's best. The plot revolves around an MP's affair with a married woman, which turns from a potential sex scandal into something much larger when the woman is killed in a car crash during a faux kidnapping set up by the MP. Vine slowly unravels the wealth of complications caused by the kidnapping gone wrong, but there's less tension than in her best books, and the end is simply anticlimactic.