Ronald Holbrrok is a fifty-seven-year-old bachelor who has lived in the same house for twenty years. Jane Doughty, the daughter of his next-door neighbours, is seventeen. She suddenly decides she is inlove with Ronald and wants to marry him. Everyone is amused at first but then events take a disturbingly sinister turn and Ronald finds himself enmeshed in a potentially tragic situation.

Henry Cecil was born near London in 1902 and was called to the Bar in 1923. Later in 1949 he was appointed at a County Court Judge, a position he held until 1967. He used these experiences as inspiration for his work. His books are works of great comic genius with upredictable twists of plot which highlight the often absurd contradictions of the legal system. He died in 1976.