For seventeen years, the Cambridgeshire hamlet of Jude's Ferry has lain
abandoned, requisitioned by the Government for military training. In its
thousand-year-old history, it had been famous for one thing, never
having recorded a single crime. But when local reporter Philip Dryden
joins the Territorial Army on exercise in the empty village, its
spotless history is literally blown apart. For the Territorial Army's
shells reveal a hidden cellar beneath the old pub. And inside the cellar
hangs a skeleton, a noose around its neck . . .