The village of Chyning nestles – somewhat smugly – on the charming valley of the Chyne. Nothing mars the seemliness of the prospect – even the  inhabitants’ eccentricities would appear, on first acquaintaince, to follow a time-honoured tradition. Lady Lacklander is as vast is she is wily; then there’s Commander Syce’s inebriated archery, Mr. Danberry-Phinn’s cats, Nurse Kettle peddling briskly about the landscape; Colonel Cartarette’s angling, his wife’s equivocal attitude to the elder male Lacklander and his daughter’s love for the younger. Finally, there’s the monster trout, the Old ‘Un, lurking by Bottom Bridge. All se3ems harmless enough, yet these are the ingredients which boil up into as strange a murder and as ingenious a solution as ever graced the case-book of Roderick Alleyn.