The Fawcett Green bell-ringers aren't particularly surprised when Simone Hollingsworth fails to turn up at practice. Her fellow campanologists just assume that bell ringing has become the latest in a long list of abandoned hobbies.

But then the increasingly strange behaviour of Simone's husband, Alan, begins to raise neighbourly suspicions about her whereabouts. And when the discovery of a body draws Chief Inspector Barnaby to the village, it becomes clear that unravelling the couple's tangled lives will have painful repercussions for the whole village...