Frank Grinder has retired from practice as a solicitor in Hong Kong and is now living in Cheltenham with his attractive, much younger Chinese wife, Winnie. He realises that he is bored and decides to write a book, recording the things that he finds irritating. His attempts to do so are interrupted by the arrival of his wife’s family for a holiday and the resultant trouble in which his naïve nephew lands himself. Meanwhile, through the agency of a South African private detective, he inadvertently becomes drawn into a supposed industrial espionage conspiracy, which is, itself, beset by mistaken identities.
This is a very funny book, with a fast plot and a host of amusing characters, including an irritating and verbose vicar, a Russian botanist and a Brummie café owner, whose idiosyncrasies of speech are cleverly captured.
Martin Wilson QC was, for many years, in practice at the Bar. He specialised in criminal law, defending and prosecuting in cases of murder, fraud, corruption and other serious crimes, both in England and Hong Kong. He always has enjoyed writing for pleasure but, for the time being at least, prefers to avoid the subject of the Law. He is the author of A Little Book of Anger (Matador)