When Simone Hollingsworth fails to turn up at bell-ringing practice, her fellow campanologists are unsurprised. Bell-ringing, it seems to the villagers of Fawcett Green, is just Simone's latest hobby to have fallen by the wayside. Only her neighbours suspect the worst, for Simone's husband has been behaving very oddly.

When the discovery of a body draws Chief Inspector Barnaby to the village, it soon becomes apparent that unravelling the mystery will stretch the Inspector's powers of persuasion to the full...