Mike Ripley

Streetwise hero Roy Angel, faced with parenthood and a move to the country, has to do the unthinkable - and get a job. To make sure he does this, his partner, fashion diva Amy May, buys him a share in Rudgard & Blugden Confidential Investigations, previously an all-female private detective agency.

Angel's first client is a millionaire chemist trying to plug a leak of stolen botox - the "pretty poison" from his supposedly secure laboratory. While trying to solve an impossible crime, Angel is distracted by a vivacious redhead with a passion for Salsa dancing; a jovial Russian sailor besotted by old East German cars fit for the junkyard; an estate agent with a crush on Audrey Hepburn; some very strange goings-on in country houses; and a redundant KGB officer trying to retrain as a gangster! But that's not the main problem. Which brave soul is going to tell Angel's fearsome hippy mother that she's soon to be a grandmother?