Actress Vena Burford is'resting' between jobs. But needs must, and with few voice-over jobs in the pipeline, Vena takes on a few jobs for friends and family around the idyllic Stratford-Upon-Avon. But interior design leads her to violent threats and showing prospective buyers around houses ushers in a drug-smuggling ring. Vena comes to know all too well that the countryside is far from quiet.

Judith Cutler, Birmingham's Queen of Crime, began her working life as a college lecturer. She has written nearly forty novels, with protagonists ranging from the nineteenth-century vicar-detective Tobias Campion to Chief Superintendent Fran Harman. Now Jane Cowan joins their ranks. Judith is married to fellow writer Edward Marston, whom she partners in the speaking duo'Murder Ancient and Modern'.