"Five stories of crime and suspense. In "All The Livelong Day", a couple on a walking holiday in Derbyshire find their relationship tested to the breaking point when they stumble into a Hitchcockian nightmare: foul weather, a remote farmhouse, and a monstrous flock of birds. Elsewhere in this collection, casual conversation in a motorway cafe comes close to unmasking pure evil, a dozen jolly Santa Clauses plot the perfect robbery, and Oxford Pl Zoe Boehm investigates crimes of real love and imaginary murder, helped and hindered in equal measure by her partner Joe Silvermann."--Publisher.