Stretched across the road was the body of a policeman.

On the way home one evening in the Romney Marsh, Bookseller Theodore Terhune and friend Julia are caught in heavy coastal fog. A passing lorry provides some guidance on the narrow country roads, but the night ends with intentional mishap and a dead body. It becomes clear that the constable's death was not accidental, but what possessed Tom Kitchen to try to stop a lorry singlehandedly at 1am? His widow is frightened; local farms vandalized; his home ransacked. Suspicion centres around the Load of Hay, an ancient Dickensian pub full of unsavoury characters, and Terhune finds the clues may lay in the history of 18th century smuggling in the Romney Marsh.

BRUCE GRAEME (1900-82) was a pseudonym of Graham Montague Jeffries, an author of more than 100 crime novels and a founding member of the Crime Writers' Association. He created six series sleuths, including bookseller and accidental detective Theodore Terhune, whose adventures-Seven Clues in Search of a Crime (1941); House with Crooked Walls (1942); A Case for Solomon (1943); Work for the Hangman (1944); Ten Trails to Tyburn (1944); A Case of Books (1946) and And a Bottle of Rum (1949)-are republished by Moonstone Press.