The book starts off with a fairly decent mystery, two oldsters vanishing without a trace, foul play is suspected. Then the writer fills most of the book with an autobiographical novel (which is by itself not that interesting), finishing up with a few chapters that take up where the story left off...
This is a mystery series opener, introducing Chief Inspector Douglas Quantrill who lives in a small village in Suffolk called Breckham Market. His right-hand man is DS Tait, who got his job by way of "graduate entry..., special police training and ... accelerated promotion," (8) and who feels he ...
Beryl Websdell’s garden gnome has been kidnapped and she has received a ransom note demanding jelly beans as payment and the gnome will be returned to her. At the same time her daughter disappears, three days before her wedding. Has her daughter been kidnapped as well? Beryl doesn’t believe so...