'We've two immediate problems: said Tench. 'We don't know who the woman is, and we don't know where she went into the sea' Reckon as it's most times the same, sir: said Bates. 'Body's washed up,an' we're asking the same two identical questions. Find the answer to one an' it's like as not the second'll be solving itself'
But, as Mike Tench discovers, the answers prove elusive. The young woman washed up on the Norfolk coast has left a number of false trails and Tench finds himself conducting a murder inquiry in which the truth could well be buried, like Medford's famous cockies, in the mud of Blacknock.

The Good and Faithful Servant is the first in a new 'Insider' crime series, featuring undercover cop Daniel Boyd by the successful crime writer Anthony Masters.

To Daniel Boyd, ex Metropolitan Police CID, a new identity does not present a problem. On the contrary - it not only provides him with a fresh start but also a completely new life. Boyd's family died as the result of a car crash; he was at the wheel.
Now, as an undercover officer, he has to infiltrate one of the few remaining traditional South London criminal families. Freddy and Vivien (Auntie Vi) Cole specialise in protection, gaming scams, fraud and robbery - but they don't do drugs. The Coles consider themselves villains with morals.
However, the Met suspect their son Eric is heroin trafficking, and he is also suspected of fatally turning on the Coles's beloved younger son Andrew. The Met want Eric - so do the Coles. As a result, Boyd goes under covers as a small-time crook, infiltrating the Cole household as bodyguard and chauffeur to Auntie Vi.
Soon he becomes her good and faithful servant - until a bomb rips apart the Coles's Sunningdale home.

'Police are searching today for a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl who disappeared a week ago from her home in the totterdown area of Bristol.'
Actress Kate Creech hears the new with alarm - her niece, Maisie, is fifteen and lives in Totterdown ...When another girl's corpse is found in a local part the Bristol police suspect Maisie's dad, an odd character who gathers young people to him like a magnet. Even though Bristol is out of his jurisdiction, Detective Inspector John Bright can't stay away - Kate is there, rehearsing As You Like It, and he adores Maisie as though she were his own. Bright, off his own patach, resorts to his own unofficial methods of investigation, methods which unearth some uncomfortable facts and lead him to a sinister young man who is keeping a diary ...