Detective Inspector Hardcastle ruffles feathers in a sleepy Hampshire
village, when he investigates the murder of a local girl
August 1917. The head of the CID at Scotland Yard sends Divisional
Detective Inspector Ernest Hardcastle and Detective Sergeant Charles
Marriott of the Whitehall Division of the Metropolitan Police to a small
Hampshire village, to investigate the murder of a local girl.
For once, Hardcastle has plenty of suspects. Was the murderer one of
Daisy Salter's many suitors? Was it the shifty individual who left the
local pub and disappeared the moment he saw Hardcastle? Or could it have
been Daisy's own father?
In an entirely different world from London, Hardcastle is forced to
adapt to the slower pace of country life, and he soon finds he is
ruffling feathers as he carries out his investigations in his own
inimitable fashion.