They’re rustling sheep on Mosley’s patch-the hill country of the Yorkshire-Lancashire border. Young Sergeant Beamish is in love. And Reuben Tunnicliffe of Upper Crudshaw has committed suicide by hanging himself with his braces in the earth closet at the bottom of his yard. Then his eighty-year-old widow Anna reports a theft of 500 pounds …

Curious beyond the call of duty, unorthodox in his methods, and unwilling to leave matters in the hands of his nemesis Chief Inspector Marsters, the imperturbable Mosley sets a trap before departing on vacation.

Before matters are sorted out, vicar Wilfred Weskitt is accused of running a brothel, Mosley publishes poetry under the name of local poetess laureate Millicent Millicheap, and the CIA, the KGB and Special Branch are baffled. But once again, Mosley triumphs in a manner that leaves his superiors and neighbours in states varying from bewilderment to near-apoplexy.

John Greenwood is the pseudonym of John Buxton Hilton, writer of both the Inspector Simon Kenworthy and Inspector Thomas Brunt series.