Streetwise hero Roy Angel, faced with parenthood and a move to the country, has to do the unthinkable - and get a job. To make sure he does, his partner, fashion diva Amy May, buys him a share in Rudgard & Blugden Confidential Investigations, a previously all-female private detective agency.

In at the deep end (as usual), Angel’s first client is a millionaire chemist trying to plug a leak of stolen Botox – the ‘pretty poison’ used in cosmetic surgery – from his supposedly secure laboratory, where everything and everyone is constantly monitored by close-circuit television cameras.

Whilst trying to solve an impossible crime, Angel is distracted by a vivacious redhead with a passion for Salsa dancing; a jovial Russian sailor with a passion for old East German cars fit only for the junkyard; an estate agent with a passion for Audrey Hepburn; some very strange goings-on in country houses; and a redundant KGB officer trying to retrain as a gangster!

And Angel gets little support from his wonderfully dysfunctional family. His estranged father is (selfishly) admitted to the hospital after a stroke and needs looking after, but that’s not the main problem. Which brave soul is going to tell Angel’s fearsome hippy mother she’s soon to be a grandmother?

MIKE RIPLEY is the author of a dozen previous novels in the ‘Angel’ series, which have twice won the Crime Writers’ Last Laugh Award for comedy. He currently lives in East Anglia as a trained Archaeologist. His previous books include: Angel on the Inside, Angel Underground and Bootlegged Angel.

‘I never read Ripley on trains, planes or buses. He makes me laugh and it annoys other passengers.’ Minette Walters