From a distance, it looks like a bundle of old clothes washed up at the tide's edge, but thirty years in the Met tells Howard otherwise. It's a body. And a body says trouble. When Howard Johnstone retires from the CID, he returns for a holiday in his home town on the North Yorkshire coast. He stays, enticed by a beautiful face from his past. Gwen Melsome, the Fair Miss Frigidaire. July 1962: Saltby Grammar's production of Twelfth Night. Howard as Feste the clown. Gwen, the cool lady Olivia. Type casting. A passionate but interrupted backstage embrace. After thirty years, Gwen is back, running her father's old bookshop, and Howard falls in lust all over again. With wishful thinking, Howard takes on a part-time driving job for one of Saltby's great and good, surgeon Alex Saunders. But when he finds a body on the beach, Howard curses his luck. He's been an idiot to return, and an even bigger idiot to stay. Nothing but trouble ahead.
About the Author: Tom Webster was born in 1931, and was educated at Sheffield City Grammar School. Before he could start his career, National Service intervened. In his youth, he was a promising sportsman, with several trials at professional football clubs. However, his destiny was in teaching. After training in Sheffield, he taught in the West Riding before becoming a headteacher at a rural school in Lincolnshire. He settled down to a headship in Newark, where he stayed, until retirement in 1989. Tom had always written stories, but a friend suggested that he tried his hand at a radio play, and he sent his first one to the BBC. The second play he submitted was broadcast, and a successful writing career was launched. Tom's first play was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1973. He went on to have twenty-eight plays produced in total, on Afternoon Theatre and the prestigious Saturday Night Theatre. He also wrote under the name David Bannister - writing plays in a wide variety of genres and settings. They were broadcast on the BBC World Service and in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and Malta, and several of his plays were translated for radio stations in Germany, Switzerland and Italy. Following retirement from teaching, Tom lived in Bath, York and Kirkbymoorside in North Yorkshire, finally returning to his home town of Sheffield. He continued to write plays, and light humorous subversive pieces for the Times Educational Supplement. Eventually, Tom started to write his first novel 'Send in the Clown', drawing on his love of the North Yorkshire coast. He enjoys playing golf and a good glass of wine.