Inspector Mosley's superiors don't usually court his company: he's thought to be slow and stupid, and he certainly has a gift for infuriating those in authority over him. But when a gallows in good working order is offered for sale in the Hemp Valley Advertiser, and a woman vanishes in suspicious circumstances from the village of Hempshaw End, it's even more infuriating that Mosley can't be found anywhere. For only his intimate knowledge of the district - the hill country of the Yorkshire-Lancashire border - has a chance of making sense of the affair.

John Greenwood's third Mosley book is as deft, witty and as unmistakably Northern as the first two.

'Witty, literate and nicely observed, with good round characters, shrewd detection and not a little suspense . . . a perfect example of the old English craft of country comedy. All the proper pleasures of detective fiction are here, plus the transforming bonus of genuine laughter.' Times Literary Supplement

'In his quiet, low-key, craggily humorous fashion, Mosley should go far.' The Times



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