“I didn’t want something affordable – I wanted something luxurious”, says a character at the outset of Gerard James Borg’s glitzy new whodunnit The Divorce Party.

Yet divorce is “a slow poison”, and The Divorce Party is an amalgamation of both poison and party that wriggles and writhes like a snake. It’s a pacy and intriguing work of popular fiction which you can imagine rolling out on screen as holiday thriller, in the style of Netflix’s Knives Out.

The whodunnit flourished between World Wars I and II, a Golden Age of detective fiction, and an era that, for the rich, revolved around extravagant parties, opulent fashion, and indulgent lifestyles. And while set in a remote luxury Xagħra villa upgraded to a brash “prism of glass” with a Baroque Red Room centrepiece, Borg’s latest novel has undertones of both Agatha Christie mystery and the grandiose conspicuous consumption of The Great Gatsby.

And just as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic was a social satire of the Roaring Twenties, Borg questions the value of overt displays of wealth in Malta a hundred years later as his characters deliberate, irony-free, over the correct type of champagne to accompany the “devilled quail eggs topped with Ossetra caviar” and muse that a “body-skimming aqua sheath from Valentino” speaks of “a Mercedes and a palatial home with a handsome, mighty, money-machine of a man.”

Front cover of The Divorce Party by Gerard James Borg

“All my books,” says Borg, “are packed with luxury brands and the trapping of a lavish lifestyle. I like to take the reader on a trip to another world and give them a fantasy about how it would be to be incredibly wealthy. The characters are a mix of reality and satire – they are inspired by real-life.”

Although Borg’s writing is richly descriptive, including some imaginative phrases and turs of phrase such as “his eyes as clueless as an Emo at the opening night of La Traviata” and “looking for cloud nine in the wrong thunderstorms”, his books, he says, are “all about the plot”.

And so, while wallowing in wealth, as a small cast of characters gather to celebrate the divorce of investment banker-cum-diamond dealer Greg Bartoli and his soon to be ex-wife, Valerie, all is not rosy in the Razzett. Alongside the parting couple, the guest list for a New Year’s Eve divorce party includes a couple in need of marriage counselling themselves, a grasping girlfriend, and a bitter half-sister.

There are confident women, a comically self-congratulatory bunch who are rife with suspicion while sharing scattered moments of sisterhood. Throw into the mix a stuttering butler with a dark secret and an uninvited guest who both breaks the mould and has something to hide, and the stage is set.

I like to take the reader on a trip to another world and give them a fantasy about how it would be to be incredibly wealthy

Research suggests that divorce lawyers get an influx of new clients after the Christmas holidays. It’s not hard to relate to the difficulties of the family gathering at the holiday dinner table between Christmas and New Year as passive-aggressive pleasantries are exchanged, siblings and cousins scowl over the Christmas log, and Uncle Geoffrey’s already on his third sherry by noon à la Bridget Jones. However, in Xagħra, there’s a killer in their midst.

While it’s clear from the outset that someone has murder on their mind, for the first part of the book the reader is left in the dark as to who will be the victim and who will make it out alive? “Fear can be rather fascinating if you stand on the other side of it,” remarks the killer.

The forty-eight-hour run-up to New Year’s Eve is dangerous and dramatic as Borg’s story unravels theatrically. As if in a series of scenes, different characters, oozing pheromones, take turns to be centre stage. Each shares their thoughts with the reader and offering insights on those around them as well as tantalising glimpses of their hidden pasts and actions they’re rather keep under wraps.

The Eurovision songwriter and author Gerard James Borg

It seems that in true Christie style, any one of the key players has a motive for murder. There are flashbacks too to the early days of Greg and Valerie’s marriage. Was it perfect to begin with? Or is there a darker truth?

“I wrote the bones of the story and then went back to expand on the characters and add red herrings. They’re deliberately misleading to keep people guessing for as long as possible because that’s the fun part in a murder mystery,” explains Borg.

“I thought it would be interesting to use a divorce party as a bitter-sweet setting. Although a ‘divorce party isn’t a thing here in Malta, they are growing in popularity elsewhere. New Year’s Eve seems a good time to celebrate a new chapter for the ex-husband and wife.”

“The idea for this book was prompted by social media. Amid the perfection of wedding bliss, declarations of undying love and public displays of affection, there’s a silence around the less glamorous realities of marriage. I wondered what reality these were shielding. What happens when happily-ever-after evaporates?”

“I also wanted to show that having money doesn’t necessarily make you happy,” he adds, and as we head into 2025, a hundred years after the publication of The Great Gatsby, it’s a healthy reminder to all of us that endlessly seeking perfection is not necessarily the best way to live.