Three Monkeys (Dido Hoare Series) Hardcover - 2005

From the publisher

The latest Dido Hoare mystery Dido Hoare, antiquarian bookshop owner and single parent, is walking her young son home from nursery. When Ben tells her he has seen a monkey, she assumes it is a figment of his imagination. However, Dido suddenly remembers having met both a monkey and its owner, one of the rough sleepers in the neighbourhood, and her duty seems clear: she must restore the poor animal to his master. Dido does recover the lost monkey, but its owner only reappears briefly when he finds the dismembered body of a girl in a pile of rubbish sacks across the road from the shop; and although he escapes from police custody and then leaves some of his belongings in Dido's dustbin for safekeeping, he is found injured in the street nearby, supposed victim of a hit-and-run accident. This bewilders not only Dido, but the local police, and journalist and heartthrob Chris Kennedy who is in the midst of a newspaper investigation into people-trafficking, and even Dido's father, Professor Barnabas Hoare. Before long, others complicate the problem: DC Ken Acker, who seems to be playing his own game; his injured wife, one of Dido's oldest customers; two thugs who invade the bookshop; a girl called Nina; and above all Annie Kelly, the retired prostitute trying to make her way in the world with the help of some shoplifting and a bribe from the journalist, Chris. After that, things become a little confusing, and working them out takes all the help and courage Dido can find...and a little more.