Kentish Town author Bella Mackie satirises Hampstead’s liberal élite in her new novel, Claws Out! and says she had “a lot of fun mocking a world I know”.

The sharply witty tale revolves around a fierce feud between two women over a huge house in Hampstead Village and its occupant, David, a psychiatrist, historian and author who relishes being a “talking head” on TV.

Fortune-hunting widow Diana aims to ensnare David, to the fury of his entitled daughter Catriona, who lives rent-free in the house’s basement and is horrified by the thought of losing her inheritance. She’s suspicious of Diana, who has left three dead husbands in her wake. “I think she poisons them”, says a woman at the start of the book, wondering who’s next.

There’s plenty of opportunity to speculate as Cat investigates Diana’s past and the narrative pokes spiky fun at the privileged “north London bubble”. For Cat and her circle, once you left this bubble you might as well be dead.

Local references can’t fail to raise a chuckle. Primrose Hill is a place to be seen, with “hordes of children called Ottoline and Rafferty who had been given free range to ‘express themselves’”, and where every dog is a “designer hybrid”.

David’s family never sets foot on Hampstead Heath before 5pm at the weekend, in order to avoid swarms of hoi-polloi. Locals like David and Cat show mock benevolence “as though they were giving up their own backyard to those less fortunate for a few hours a week”.

Hypocrisy is skewered. A charity drive to stamp out homelessness in the Hampstead area is undermined by the main ethos behind it – to get people off the streets so they didn’t bring down the tone.

Although David rails against the evils of capitalism he never feels he has quite enough money and always felt he should be “properly remunerated for his presence in the world”.

Bella said of the novel’s characters: “I know some of these people in real life.” On BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour she didn’t spare herself, noting that she had a privileged upbringing, and she sees something of her when she was in her 20s and “a bit entitled” in the character of Cat.

Money, status and the power men hold is a constant. Diana sees bagging David as the key to the London elite and its lifestyle – invited to the right parties, close to the political class, access to real culture, free rein to do what you wanted as long as you occasionally wrote an opinion piece about climate change or capitalism.

After suffering a fall, David is worried that a few weeks laid up would mean he’d drop down the ladder of importance. And Diana’s idle son, Zeb, who has a fling with Cat, gets his devoted mother to plough money into his duff business ventures.

A female character finds that being the wife of an important man made you even more invisible than a normal woman. And Cat recounts how, when her father was at his peak fame, a teacher told her: “In your life, some men will stare at your tits and some men will stare at your dad.”

But as Bella slyly observes, Cat has absorbed the message that private school gives: you are special and deserve the spotlight at all times.

Cat’s father has landed her a job at London’s most exclusive private members’ club, and she has previously worked briefly in publishing, a TV production company and the art world. You can’t imagine any of her friends being a nurse or a teaching assistant.

The novel’s vividly portrayed characters are a pretty unlikeable bunch, though at least Diana has had to look out for herself without the advantages Cat and her social set have enjoyed. Humour is a saving grace. Diana wasn’t opposed to Brexit, but she would never say that in north London. “She might as well squat down in the middle of the street and relieve herself.”

Suspense builds, with flashbacks to the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Diana’s previous spouses, and current action taking an intriguing, dark turn.

At times the story is a tad long-winded, but it’s cleverly plotted – although some aspects are perhaps foreseeable – and very entertaining.

Bella, author of bestsellers including her debut novel How to Kill Your Family, prefaces Claws Out! with a quote from Andy Burnham: “We have definitely been far too much Hampstead and not enough Hull in recent times and we need to change that.”

Nevertheless, Bella is a confirmed north Londoner. In an acknowledgement at the end of the novel, she declares: “Thank you to the place that raised me. North London, often the butt of terrible jokes made by cynical politicians who live in much grander areas themselves. If I belong anywhere, it’s there.”

• Claws Out! By Bella Mackie, The Borough Press, £20