"It's admirable to have ambitions," says ten-year-old tomboy Kay Martin in 1900 to Charlie Miller, a boy who dreams of becoming an admiral. Kay has her own ambitions, as does Charlie's mother, Dotty, a Suffragette. Robert Johnstone, Charlie's distant cousin has ambitions which make him Charlie's fellow Naval officer, chief rival in love and worst enemy. Kay and Dotty can only watch with perplexity as the two boys carry on a private vendetta from being students at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, through World War I, the Twenties with submarines and aircraft-carrying airships, and the Thirties with unending global crises. But by 1939 it looks as if they are not the Admirables: their ambitions have been bypassed by time, and the mantle of warrior must pass to their children. World War Two begins without the United States. Then comes Pearl Harbor and their last chance to prove themselves, in the only arm of the Navy still able to do so: ‘the silent service', submarines. But it is not just the enemy they must confront. Their years of personal animosity have left a legacy of failures and failings that need to be overcome if peace and victory are to be found. As ever each is going to do that in his own way, and damn the torpedoes.

After little-loved member of parliament Henry Cavendish is found murdered one Saturday morning his opponents waste no time in working on a no-holds barred campaign of lies, truths, half-lies and psychological attacks. The Acting Chief Constable suspends the local investigation in favour of an outside unit sent by Special Branch. Detective Inspector Anthony Lockless and a fractious team of individuals arrive to find themselves mired in a sea of political obfuscation, Masonic loyalties and police politics. His main concern quickly becomes a faceless confessor who claims to have killed Cavendish, and is being driven on by a religious Voice ordering them to continue by destroying the ‘Whore of Babylon'. To Lockless this can only be the left-wing candidate standing for election, the attractive and wealthy but naive young Claire Thornton. She is being threatened by a voice which laughs at her in the night. But is it the Voice, her estranged husband, political opponents on the right, or the hard left of her own party? Since he is there to investigate Cavendish's death, not the threat to a politician whose beliefs are far removed from his own, what can he really do to protect her? Can he trust members of the local police force? How much does he share with them and how much does he do under the official radar?

A visitor is out of luck at the Angel and Duck pub in the West Country: they've been murdered there. The locals are concerned by two things: (a) a mysterious package due imminently; and (b) one of them has to be the murderer. And (c) that person might be looking for more victims. London-based Chief Inspector Samson arrives with local boy Detective Constable Morton to investigate. Morton's initial enthusiasm at having such an important visitor quickly dissolves as he concludes that London has used the opportunity to get rid of one of their rejects. He finds himself being mentally and physically dragged into every dead-end in the county. Eight-year-old Thuthan wants to do the sword-dance with him with real swords. The beautiful and enigmatic Carry looks down on him as a country bumpkin. There's a nude painting of Carry somewhere he can't find. And he keeps waking up with nightmares after being treated as the fatted calf. His only aim in the end is to solve the case before the irascible old fool Samson accidentally trips over the solution. But the denouement, when it comes, is something only one of them ever expected.

With one arm in a brace, stitches in his forehead, and having just lost his job as a teacher, Mark wakes up on Friday morning to discover a message from his girlfriend Madeleine informing him that she is now his ex, pregnant, and leaving him to fly back to Australia. As his car is in for a service and no taxis are immediately available, he catches the Underground Piccadilly Line to Heathrow, believing that the five hours before her flight departs will give him time for the 33 stations and 81 minutes between him and reconciliation with she who he calls Maddening. But the Piccadilly Line is in meltdown and each passing minute sees his hopes of keeping the woman he has determined to marry recede. As he battles signal failures, security alerts and broken wipers he writes notes for his unborn child to read in twenty-one years' time, the story of how he and YBM (your bloody mother) met, fell in love, and why it wasn't quite his fault when it went wrong.

This is a story about a trial that never took place.
The prosecuting counsel wasn't a nine-foot high vulture wearing what looked like a budgie as a wig; the defence counsel wasn't short and roly-poly and didn't wear a huge bright-blue-rinse wig.
The defendant wasn't called Norah the Nose, the litigant wasn't known as Edgar The Ears.
The judge wasn't called Judge Beak.
The jury did not include a Quiet American, Miss Strawberry Mousse, The Major, Hugo The Accountant, Miss F, Miss F's Mother, Mr Sleepy, Vicar Preachy, Mrs Baggs, Mrs Plum, a Prim Maiden Aunt, Clowns named Clyde and Bonnie, or a Nun With Guitar who didn't speak in a deep Russian accent and didn't wear Goth make-up and tight-fitting sequinned habits which didn't shimmer with thousands of blinking, winking dots.
The narrator did not fall in love with the Nun With Guitar who wasn't and hadn't.
And it's only ever ...
11 ... 12 ...     ... 14 ... 15 ...
There never is a
... 13 ...

George Browne and his wife Winifred have retired to a large, run-down pile in the country. Rumour has it that it was once the abode of a mad aristocratic family with a penchant for Satanism, and that both they and their victims still haunt the corridors. Other rumours are that it was a lunatic asylum for much of the nineteenth and twentieth century, and bodies of the inhabitants are buried around the large gardens in unmarked graves.

The Brownes are an unremarkable retired couple who, depending on who you might ask, have bought it as an investment, or alternatively as somewhere with enough bedrooms to accommodate their children, grand-children, and the little baby great-grandchildren. Too often in the past excuses have been made at special times, the most common of which has been of the "I don't want to put you to any trouble" variety. That excuse can no longer hold water.

Now it is approaching Christmas. Winter has set in, but the house is snug with oil heaters and real fires. As the various relations arrive, or don't arrive, it becomes clearer why invitations might have been refused in the past. The men of the family believe in having their way. The women of the family are strong-willed in their own different ways, and have various means of getting what they want.

The guests of the family - friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, wives and husbands - discover that their partners have a totally different side to them as the explosive hatreds of long-nurtured fights and feuds simmer to the surface before quickly boiling over.

One evening Winifred Browne encourages them to each tell a story as they sit in the lounge with the large fire warming them, the television off, no access to broadband, computers or mobile connections. Reluctantly at first they begin. As each evening passes with different members taking turns, they announce in stories the feelings and hopes they cannot voice in public.

Finally it's the turn of Winifred Browne. Her story will be the one that tells them who they are, where they come from, and maybe why they have turned out the way they have.

A group of friends get together during the last weekend of August 1939 at the rural retreat named Longwood, just a few miles from Portsmouth. They are there to celebrate the last time they will see Georgina Riley, famed American novelist and socialite, for some time, as she is scheduled to leave for her native New York in order to marry her childhood sweetheart. During the afternoon they good-humouredly assign to each other the most suitable names of the nine muses, the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne:

Calliope: the muse of epic poetry and rhetoric
Clio: history
Erato: love poems and mimicry
Euterpe: lyric poetry
Melpomene: tragedy
Polymnia: hymns to the gods and heroes
Terpsichore: dance
Thalia: comedy
Urania: astronomy, astrology and prophecy

The following morning Georgina is discovered in her bedroom covered in blood, her throat slit, barely alive. Her American maid is dead. A tiara Georgina had been flaunting the day before has disappeared.

Detective Inspector Rudman arrives to investigate. But with Georgina in a coma and no solid evidence there is little he can do apart from haunt their lives. With Germany's invasion of Poland a week later they disperse across the land, some to the air-force, some to the army, others to reserved civilian jobs.

But Rudman does not give up. Wherever they are he can be found. Whatever other duties he is tasked to, he will find time to keep tabs on them. Whatever the defeats and victories of the Allied cause, he has only one aim: to find the person responsible for the murder done that weekend in Longwood.

The war ends; some of the Muses have survived, some not. Some have prospered, some married, some matured, others have found despair. And then comes invitation to spend another weekend at Longwood. The message is that Rudman has found the evidence he has been looking for.

And so one of the surviving couples motor slowly down to Portsmouth, remembering the original weekend, the trials and the tribulations of the past years, and wonder: what will be revealed during the coming weekend at Longwood?

Little does ex-beat-bobby now window-cleaner Jim Allbright realise just how much paperwork his letter containing a simple enquiry to his local council is about to produce, nor the strange events he will experience as a result of the 'system'. But if the system cannot be beaten the interchange of letters can be used to have a little fun and get to know some of the people struggling behind it, especially the woman who signs herself as "Sandi (pp the Administrator)", and perhaps, one day even meet her and her little daughter, Helen.

In a cross between 'Last Of The Summer Wine' and 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest', set against a backdrop of the brave new world of New Labour's end of honeymoon, Fred is the Last Cynical Optimistic Realist.

Believing that he's found the perfect niche – three square meals a day plus all the newspapers he can read just for occasionally pretending to be mad – he's not going to be the one to upset the apple cart. Oh, no.

Safe from the wiles of women and the woes of the world, he's not going to rock the boat. Oh, no.

No, he's just going to sit and observe, and comment quietly on the insanity of life outside.

Well, maybe just little one tug of the loose strand of wool on life's jersey ...

Did you know they elected a monkey as mayor in Hartlepool?

The first in the FFSG series.

Detective Sergeant Frank Summers is a man on a mission: to keep his head down, stay out of trouble and enjoy the relaxed atmosphere of the easy-going, genteel town of Wellbury, his new posting. It's a town just made for him, where, he believes, even the criminals take bank holidays off. And he'll have time to pursue the philosophy of his lodestar, the great Greek philosopher Epicurus, who maintained that the highest aim of any life is to enjoy it. But, while perceptive in his professional life, he tends to miss the subtleties in his private life. In this case he fails to realise that his own tranquillity is being threatened by three women and a philanderer. The fact that the women in question are his boss, his constable and the local pathologist adds just the touch of danger to his life that he had hoped to avoid. The philanderer has been dead several decades. The women are very much alive.

The second in the FFSG series.

Detective Sergeant Frank Summers is faced with an unexpected crisis as the staid citizens of the genteel town of Wellbury rapidly descend into disorganised anarchy after a sociology professor announces on radio that eighty-five percent of the population will die in a coming cull. The prediction appears to be coming true as apparently total strangers are felled one by one according to a list of the ten-most-disliked Wellburians, from nagging neighbours to estate agents ... and the police, at a poorly performing number ten. But Frank fails to realise that there is a graver danger closer to home. Three women have decided that he is their responsibility: his boss, his constable and the local pathologist have agreed to become best of enemies. Now they intend to re-arrange his fate the way it should be. And they aren't asking anyone's permission. Least of all his. In fact they aren't going to bother even telling him.

The third in the FFSG series.

Detective Sergeant Frank Summers is in the doghouse, despite having recently arrested an internationally sought con-artist. And since he is in the doghouse he has no intention of pointing out that there is something very strange about the attractive young French police woman who has come to interview the arrested man, not to mention the two detectives claiming to be from Scotland Yard. Oh, no, he is going to stay well out of the way this time. Definitely.

And indeed he might have, had not the diminutive French police woman been so good at winding everyone else up.

The fourth in the FFSG series.

The doctors have pronounced Detective Sergeant Frank Summers physically fit following recovery after his shooting, but his colleagues fear that his sense of humour was extracted along with the bullet. They are, as always, more than willing to interfere in his life in the pursuit of a good cause. If that wasn't enough, a bunch of criminals calling themselves the Joker Gang are laughing at him, the university students are creating mayhem during their rag week, and someone called The Shocker is trying to kill him. The only advantage is that it take his mind off of the ultimatum the three women in his life have given him, one that he has only until the Sunday to resolve. Or leave town.

Which, under the circumstances, is probably the best option.

The fifth in the FFSG series.

Detective Sergeant Summers is under a hex, otherwise known as his colleagues. First they don't want him to get married. Then it is imperative it the wedding must go ahead. Then they decide that a prophecy has been made which threatens the long walk to the altar. They don't believe in prophecies, but aren't sure that prophecies understand that. So they'll have to Do Something About It. And if their bumbling efforts aren't enough to ensure he never makes it to his own marriage, he has to cope with visiting aliens, resident ghosts and flying thuribles. He does have tiny Squishy to protect him, but what match can even this plucky little kitten be against a prospective mother-in-law?

The sixth in the FFSG series.

The Summers have tied the knot and embarked on their honeymoon in a small, family-run hotel in Normandy. She has very definite ideas of what she wants out of a honeymoon: to set a seal on their love after a whirlwind engagement, and to form a foundation for life-long devotion. He just wants to nick a French police officer's kepi. He had a Bobby's helmet stolen from him once by a French girl while he was on crowd duty one New Year's Eve in London, and now he intends to return the favour. Neither is about to achieve their aim unless they can solve the mystery of the woman in the bath and the missing heroin. Which means pitting their minds against the French Inspectors Simenon. That's Mr and Mrs Simenon, whose marriage has gone beyond the rocks and is now beating itself to death against humdrum reality. One or either or both or neither could be the guilty crumpet. More importantly, is the Simenons' marriage a portent of what could become of the Loonymooners?

Ultimately the decisive question could well be: which side do the peas go?

The seventh in the FFSG series.

Detective Inspector Frank Summers has been booked off work following a near fatal anaphylactic shock. His wife is determined that he should obey his doctor's orders. As she is also his boss that should be simple. But he is determined to identify the perpetrator or perpetrators behind a series of attacks on little old ladies. Both their efforts are impeded by various movements becoming increasingly militant. The police station appears to have gone feminist. The Old Birds army (TOBs, Women Only) is planning a pre-emptive defence of helpless little old ladies. The Cult of The Clueless (TCoTC, Men Only) are demanding their right to ignorance. The Religious Once are threatening outright violence if their tolerant beliefs are not respected. Various New Age and Old Hippy believers, followers and troublemakers are descending on Wellbury in search of ley lines. Frank is embroiled in an e-mail game of double-chess with an anonymous person calling himself A Mason who sends messages which might make some sense if anybody could work out what they meant, but whatever they are they sound distinctly threatening. Frank and Frieda are running out of time as they approach Demonstration Day, when TOBs and TCoTC plan on settling the Religious Once's hash.

And, being off work, it's Frank's turn to cook dinner.

The eighth in the FFSG series.

A new sergeant arrives at Wellbury police station, the emotionless but paranoid Sergeant Gote, a man with a phobia of eggs. Detective Inspectors Summers are enjoying the renovation of their new home in preparation for the birth of Baby, their first child, when Frank stumbles on a hidden alcove which contains what could be the original world-famous Fountain created by Marcel Duchamp in 1917. Their attempts to temporarily keep the discovery from the media go wrong, and suddenly it appears that every art fanatic and conspiracy theorist is on their way to Wellbury to view the miracle, along with several unknown parties ready to use illegal means to get their hands on something priceless. Added to this is the anonymous person threatening to poison jars of Binkertys Baby Food unless a ransom is paid, a far closer and real danger, as that is planned to be Baby's food of choice. Frank and Frieda are forced to juggle hiding places for the Fountain while the officers at the station polish their truncheons in preparation for welcoming the extortionist when he or she is run to ground. For them, nobody threatens Baby and survives. In the end it is a wounded Sergeant Gote who is celebrated hero, though quite how that happened he will never be sure. Though the critical question remains: should Binkertys have an apostrophe or not? And if so, where should it go?