Chef Charlie Hunter's arrival in the beautiful Chilterns is the fulfilment of a long-held dream: to open her own restaurant in an idyllic countryside location. The Old Forge sits on the village green (complete with duck pond and flint-faced houses) and seems just the place for the high-quality cooking she wants to be known for.

But instead of rural peace and a chance to lick her wounds, Charlie finds something ugly stirring under the chocolate box perfection. When a prominent local builder is found dead in suspicious circumstances, Charlie the outsider becomes a suspect. And the only way to clear her name seems to be to find out who the real killer is.

Luckily she has allies: her student waitress, a kitchen porter making up in muscles what he lacks in brain and a briskly efficient clairvoyant. Using all the craft Charlie's learned in kitchens - discipline, timing, preparation and grim determination - she will be as relentless in her quest to bring a murderer to justice as she is in creating the perfect meal.