Jason Brazel is an out of work journalist who lives in Penrith with his family and mother-in-law, Amita. She knows everyone and everything that’s going on in this corner of the Lakes. So when it’s discovered that Madeline Frobisher, one of Amita’s fellow regulars at the bingo club has died, found by the postman outside her crumbling country home close to Ullswater Lake, she senses immediately this is no accident.

The trouble is, no one else seems to take her suspicions seriously. That is, until she enlists the help of her friends at the Penrith Bingo Club. Dismissed by many as eccentric, over the hill or out of touch, it turns out that it’s unlucky for some that these amateur sleuths are on the case…