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The village of Idleborough – AKA Lazytown – is the sort of sleepy English backwater that the 21st century appears to have forgotten. Home to four public houses, a village shop and a hardware store that somehow fails to stock anything you might actually want to buy, its collection of weird and wacky residents, rich and poor alike – from the Squire in the Manor all the way down to Mucker, whose only footwear is a pair of rubber boots – live in a sort of rural timewarp.
Life revolves around the four pubs, so when one of them – officially called The Three Pigeons but unofficially something much coarser – closes without warning, it’s nothing short of a disaster. And when the landlord and his wife, Clem and Maeve, are found to have disappeared without trace, the village is called to action stations and, led by local writer, Sam Bryant, an action group is formed to save the pub and find Clem and Maeve. The local press in the unlikely form of Canadian-born reporter, Mallory Fillery – who has secrets of her own – is called in to help.
Then the mystery takes a darker twist when a villager is murdered.
Who’s hiding what? Who’s not what they appear to be? And what’s Mallory’s connection?
Morris Dancing, Cricket, Duck Races and Granny’s Bobbins; pitchforks and flaming torches; Red Hereford cattle and thatched roofs all have their part to play as Sam and Mallory, their own lives at risk, finally get to the bottom of things.
Midsomer Murders meets The Vicar of Dibley? You decide, but whatever this is – comedy, mystery, thriller, farce, satire – something funny is definitely going down in Lazytown…
“Steve Sheppard is a gifted comic writer with a knack for clever plotting and thrills.” (Greg Mosse, author)