A quiet English town is turned upside down by a grisly murder . . .

Private detective and poet Nigel Strangeways has been invited to address the Maiden Astbury literary society in the sleepy and serene Dorset town. But all is not as peaceful as it seems. Local brewer Eustace Bunnett is on the warpath after his beloved dog is found dead in one of the Bunnett's Brewery vats. The grisly crime casts an air of suspicion over the whole town, but no culprit is found.

When a body is discovered in the very same vat, gruesomely boiled down to its bones, Strangeways is called in to catch the killer and solve this very peculiar mystery in a town more perturbing than picturesque . . .

"Blake's resourceful and well-read amateur investigator Nigel Strangeways is a distinctive sleuth." —The Times (London)

"The Nicholas Blake books are something quite by themselves in English detective fiction." —Elizabeth Bowen