"Don't you take on so, Fred. Not but what I didn't tell you no good would come of it. When Uranus is in Virgo-"
In the smoke-grimed West Midlands industrial city of Arkenshaw, a pair of policemen, Sergeant Duckett and Constable Ryder, have been charged with the wrongful arrest for burglary of two Pakistani immigrants, Ghulam Beas and Chakwal Mohamed. Antony Maitland leads the two cops' defense. It does not help the wily barrister's case that Sergeant Duckett openly admits to being a nativist who wants Pakistanis out of his country. As he talks to the widowed Duckett and his daughter and formidable astrology enthusiast mother, Antony realizes that in Arkenshaw the words foreigner and Pakistani are nearly synonymous. Are Beas and Mohamed simply the victims of a racist cop's thuggish machinations, as the prosecution contends, or is there something yet rottener going on in West Riding? When one of the principals in the affair is murdered, it seems there is something very rotten indeed.
This gripping courtroom drama from 1967 features a new introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.
