[1] [2] [3] It was his last novel, published by Hodder and Stoughton the year of his death, and featured his regular character Sir Clinton Driffield.

It was the seventeenth in a series of novels featuring Driffield, a Chief Constable of a rural English county, published during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.

During a Paper Salvage Drive to help the British war effort, a librarian is found hanging in the small building where he garaged his car which is laid up due to the shortage of petrol.

What at first seems a clear case of suicide is disproved by the criminologist called in to deal with the forensic evidence, who informs the officious Inspector that "common sense is all you need" to work out it is in fact murder.

The dead man was deep in debt with a younger wife with many male admirers, and had been involved with the efforts to sort out valuable editions of books and documents that may have been collected for salvage.