REVIEW: Peter James’ Picture You Dead, Mayflower Theatre, Southampton, February 27-March 1; also Theatre Royal Brighton, March 4-9.

Most stage adaptations of books end up feeling like precisely that – books adapted for the stage – but Shaun McKenna’s brilliant adaptation of Peter James’ bestseller Picture You Dead creates an easy flow, which grips instantly as it drags you into the murky end of the art world.

Adrian Linford’s cleverest of sets does the rest, divided into the three key locations ensuring that we barely pause for breath as we flit between them as the plot twists and turns and then turns again.

At the centre of it all are the Kiplings (Fiona Wade and Ben Cutler), a decent hardworking couple who think they’ve hit the jackpot when it turns out an artwork they’ve picked up at a car boot sale could be a missing masterpiece worth millions. They dare to dream but oh so quickly the dream turns to nightmare when the criminal fraternity get a whiff of their apparent good fortune.

Nicholas Maude plays the suave villain very nicely. Jodie Steele plays his vicious sidekick with gun-toting swagger. Stuck in the middle of it all is Peter Ash as Dave Hegarty, a one-time forger who claims to have gone straight and in his new respectability now calls himself a copyist. Which is where the real confusion creeps in. Once there is a copy of the is-it-or-isn’t-it-a masterpiece, it’s anybody’s guess what we are all looking at. And the menace grows. Very, very effectively.

Pity poor Detective Superintendent Roy Grace whose job it is to solve the crime, all tied up with a cold case murder he’s attempting to crack from nine years before. George Rainsford is Grace for the second time in a Peter James stage adaptation, and you can sense his ease with the role – a major element in a fiendishly enjoyable night out.