‘It’ll be common knowledge in an hour or two…we’re treating this as a case of murder. Is that what you wanted to know?...Now, Mr Campion, I’m a busy man as you can see. Can you help me at all, or are you wasting my time? ’ Matthew James Matthew dies of natural causes whilst staying at the upmarket Drover’s Arms in the Cotswolds. Max Newgate, the pompous manager of the inn is found dead miles away in a Suffolk river near an archaeological dig. The star geologist of Omega Oils, the brilliant but eccentric Francis Makepeace, could be connected to both, but he has disappeared and seems determined not to be found. L.C. Corkran, whose retirement from Her Majesty’s security service ‘has been greatly exaggerated’ now consults for the multi-national Omega Oils and turns to his old friend Albert Campion (who has always behaved ‘like a civilised non-entity’ but you wouldn’t play poker with him) for help. A carnival of delightful, and not so delightful, characters become involved in the hunt for the missing geologist: the cool-headed, independent Miss Anthea Peregrine; the love-struck schoolboy Robert Oncer Smith; the rather dubious antique-dealer Morris Jay; known thug and small-time villain Ginger Scott, Appleyard, a boorish Suffolk policeman; and the grotesque, repellent and very dangerous Claude Porteous. But why is Makepeace, a brilliant and successful man, on the run? Is it because of a failed Omega Oil exploration project in the new African republic of Serendi, or connected to the archaeological excavation of a 4th Century Roman ship? Could the missing Francis Makepeace and the dead Matthew James Matthew somehow be one and the same person? It takes all Campion’s guile and charm to get to the bottom of the mystery and ensure that the new, youthful allies he recruits emerge unscathed.