Trama

The Bleakridge Watch patrols the streets of their remote village, exposing anyone who steps outside the law. When one of their members dies, Barnaby uncovers just how far some people will go for power.

The Bleakridge village watch are a Draconian bunch, penalizing the pettiest of offences. Barnaby and Winter investigate when one of their number, butcher Angus Colton, is murdered whilst looking into a spate of burglaries and his sister-in-law, the fearsome Ingrid Loxton explains that the group was established after her brother was killed in an unsolved hit and run. Not everybody supports the watch, notably landlord Mitch McAllister, who is attacked and his pub vandalized and who is prime suspect when another member of the group is killed. When Ingrid relents by asking Barnaby to help catch the murderer he discovers not only a burned out car stolen two years earlier from café owners Barbara and Duncan Walton for the hit and run but the identities of the burglar, putting Ingrid in a bad light, and the driver - who has cause to silence those watch members likely to expose their own form of crime and punishment.—don @ minifie-1

Barnaby and Winter have mixed feelings of the record-low crime rate at Bleakridge, where the pitiless village watch led by manor lady Ingrid Loxton -founder since a hit and run killed her brother- cracks down of every futility, but fails to prevent the murder of her own brother in law, watch member and butcher Angus Colton, apparently during a series of burglaries. The watch has opponents, notably Mitch McAllister, whose strict closing time-struck pub incurs gross vandalism. Another watch member is killed, and the burglar part of a cynical plot while the initial death may still prove relevant.—KGF Vissers