In the long tradition of the anti-hero in English literature, award-winning author Daniel Jacob has created a whole bunch of them - each able to stand shoulder to shoulder with a Flashman or anyone from the pages of a Waugh novel.

With the touch of a Tom Sharpe for grand farce, the grotesque Crooke-Wells siblings trace their mean, mendacious and downright nasty steps through a series of plots and pitfalls in their attempt to accumulate unearned and entirely unmerited wealth. Standing like a beacon in this sea of iniquity is the mother, whose string of illicit love affairs seems positively honest by comparison.

This is the story of an upper-crust English family which is part of a sub-group known as The Hereditary Rich. Beautifully written and splendidly wicked, The Silence of the Shaggy Rug is not for the faint-hearted or politically correct.