An oasis in the heart of Kentish Town, Balaclava Street is ripe with gentrification. But, then the body of an elderly woman is found at No. 5. Her demise seems to have been peaceful but for the fact that her throat is full of river water…For the Met’s Peculiar Crimes Unit, lead by London’s longest serving detectives, Arthur Bryant and John May, this curious death marks the beginning of a distinctly sinister investigation. And the new owner of No. 5 is understandably unsettled by the damp in the basement of her home, some particularly resilient spiders and the ghostly sound of rushing water.Unearthing hither to undiscovered secrets, the two octogenarian policemen learn that, in London filled with the rich, the poor and the dispossessed, there’s still something a desperate individual is willing to kill for. And kill again to protect.Armed only with their wits, their own idiosyncratic practices and a plentiful supply of boiled sweets, Bryant and May come face to face with madness, greed and revenge in a wickedly sinuous mystery that goes to the heart of every London home.