Jimmy and his Mum were at the supermarket when she disappeared. He didn't immediately think that it was a problem - after all she was suffering from dementia and out of roughly the last hundred and fifty visits to GetItAll he'd lost his mother on thirty five of them. But - she wasn't usually gone for this long and then there was the nagging worry that she might have become the latest victim of the Acton Axeman - a serial killer who was targeting blond, slightly-plump women wearing green - a description which fitted Jimmy's Mum to a tee.
The police weren't unduly interested either, until Sergeant Charlie Rivett came on the scene. Some people would be rather offended if they knew that others thought of them as a bit of a bastard. Charlie was different. Charlie was proud of it. You wouldn't need to ask - he'd tell you. He had something of a chip on his shoulder (well, actually, it was more the output of a medium-sized McDonalds) about his promotion - or rather, lack of it. Obviously if it became known that he had a lead in to the Acton Axeman the case would be taken away from him and taken over by the idiots with degrees, so Charlie has to tread just a bit carefully on this one.
Jimmy's got support though. He's captain of a quiz team and they're really rather good. They're known simply as The Team and they're banned from some pubs. They have to saunter in separately and meet casually and agree to have a go at tonight's quiz... They're something of an unusual combination. Jimmy's girlfriend is V, a martial arts expert whose parents came from Nigeria. Add in an aged Jewish busker with a penchant for bomb making, a skinhead with an extraordinary photographic memory - but no understanding of what he's read - and Jamal from Dubai who is into ballroom dancing. Oh - and you're going to meet a couple of strange MPs (yes - stranger than you might think) and a luscious lady from the BBC.