Charlie Clutterbuck lives on a dilapidated boat moored at Iron Wharf, just downriver from Cherringham. He scrapes a living and is notorious locally for drink and drugs. When his body is found in the river, well over the limit, it’s an open and shut case as far as the police are concerned. Death by misadventure. Charlie’s friend Ray isn’t so sure. Not after what he’d witnessed in The Ploughman’s.
Ray is Jack’s neighbour, living on a nearby barge, and has done Jack a favour or two in the past, which makes Jack feel obliged to at least make initial enquiries. Doubts are raised when Jack and Sarah begin asking questions and even more so when they take a look round Charlie’s boat.
Jack Brennan, a retired NYPD homicide Detective, relocated to the Cotswold village of Cherringham after his wife died. They had always planned to retire to the UK and live on a boat, so Jack decided to fulfil the dream and now lives on an old Dutch barge moored at Cherringham, with his dog Riley.
Sarah Edwards, a web designer, returned to Cherringham with her two children when her husband left her for his boss. She now runs her own company. She and Jack are great friends as well as the local unofficial mystery solvers. They had no idea that life in a sleepy English village would present so many challenges.