Genteel Anarchists

All his former colleagues at the Met had warned former Detective Inspector Alex Lucas against retiring to a place where he had spent childhood holidays, but now, even as he stood in the pouring rain looking out at the grey North Sea he knew they had been wrong. There he was, newly-retired and recently divorced, in a small Yorkshire harbour village where he had purchased a tiny cottage and settled to enjoy life in a supportive community which had its own approach to local fiscal policy where general practice is not to pester the Inland Revenue too much. As far as possible, jobs are done for friends and small contracts are settled in ’beer vouchers’ with little paperwork. Alex is determined to get to know the locals but he is reluctant to disclose the fact that he is a former police officer in the fraud squad in case this alienates him from the community and their less than official interpretation of tax laws. He eventually realises that he cannot expect to be welcomed in to the village if he insists upon having such a secret and he gradually lets his guard down. All is pretty much perfect in his little Shangri-La, even when his former mother-in-law moves in to the village with her attempts to promote some form of reconciliation between him and his former wife. The main threat to his new life occurs when the village’s only pub is threatened with closure, but the villagers will not go down without a fight.