Sergeant Cluff Laughs Last Paperback / softback

"The Maigret of the Dales"Detective-Sergeant Cluff is at home in the bleak, moorland market town of 1960s Gunnarshaw.

A gruff and gloomy loner, he has spent a lifetime observing local folk - and knows their lives inside out.

They know him, too - a bulky, macintoshed figure who watches from the shadows of Gunnarshaw's ginnels as they go about their daily business, his dog Clive always at his side. But it's not just criminals Cluff has to watch out for.

Never satisfied with easy answers to cases, Cluff is a maverick and no flatterer to authority - much to the bemusement of Detective-Constable Barker, but much more so to the despair of thehapless Inspector Mole, who tries at every opportunity to outwit or contain Cluff's singular methods of detection. But beneath Cluff's dour exterior beats the heart of a truly compassionate man who possesses a deep understanding of human nature, in all its sordid and depraved details - details which frequently push Cluff to bend the rules in his pursuit of moral justice. Sergeant Cluff Laughs LastDetective-Sergeant Cluff, from the shadows of a ginnel, watches a young woman weeping in Gunnarshaw's busy high street - and wonders why.

But when a dead body is discovered in a forest plantation, Cluff calls on his extensive knowledge of Gunnarshaw folk, as well as his instinctive perception of human nature, to uncover a trail of fateful and unrequited love. As the investigation progresses, nothing is as it seems, and as Cluff knows only too well from a lifetime of detective work, when it comes to crimes of passion, there are never any easy answers.

Inspector Mole, on the other hand, is certain he has the case all wrapped up - and is determined to prove Cluff wrong.