Return to Fordhamton

In this second volume of the Fordhamton Trilogy things are still not going smoothly for the Trustees of Alan Price's will. What kind of memorial did he intend to represent 'Harmony, Industry and Co-operation'. Then the same three Councillors, the Mayor Michael Jackson, Peter Noone and Valerie Masters find themselves requested to deliver three envelopes in accordance with Arthur Brown's will. It seems the late Arthur Brown knew all about the affair between Peter and Val. What they did not expect was an insight to his life and loves; a strong and pungent pipe smoking tobacco, specialised homecare and a pensioner support group that was a cover for a monthly meeting where strippers were invited and non-PC language was more than tolerated. Into this comes Tim Rose, a management trainee at CCS Bank who is left in the countryside with no money and no map. In his attempts to get back to the training centre he is arrested as the local flasher, rounded up with a bunch of foul smelling tramps and arrested again as an accomplice of a young women who has stolen Bank and Credit Cards. Their stay at a hotel is interrupted by a Special Branch raid who have been tipped off that he is an international terrorist. Things do not get better when he succumbs to a fever and taken in by a local journalist. The Mayor is more concerned about whether Pie Sunday can go ahead now that Arthur Brown's house has been brought by an ethical company. Everything is saved by the Gryphon bat, nesting in its walls. But acting Detective Inspector Miles Davis sees conspiracies everywhere. Dave Edmunds, once of CCS Banking and now owner of the wine bar California Dreamin' has an answer to everything but it is the Mayor who becomes the local hero with his solution to end the police enquiries as they edge closer to an uncomfortable and unwelcome truth.