An uncompromising British school headmaster finds himself beset by one thing going wrong after another.
It's New Year's Eve in Thatcher's de-industrialising Britain. The scene is set at a seedy bar in Liverpool where a group of Irish Protestant and Irish Catholic pensioners will gather to clash and bash the new year in.
Kate lives fiercely alone, cut off the from present and haunted by the memories of grief from her past.
A suspect is brought to a London police station charged with gross indecency. Police at the station believe he is connected with a murder in the area earlier that night, but the suspect refuses to speak.
When a barmaid and part-time model becomes a murderer's third victim in Chelsea, the only apparent links are to a local reporter, Mary, and three art graduates financing a film with local part-time jobs.
Instead of spending her golden years lying down, the indomitable Hetty Wainthropp found her calling late in life. Combining common sense, her husband, and her pocketbook, this senior sleuth takes on all the cases the police deem too minor.
