In search of her unknown father, Mary Lightfoot - carpenter, nurse, animal-trainer and ex-detective - stumbles across an unexpected family drama. Two cultured old ladies are being drugged into senility by their greedy, hypocritical nephew; their housekeeper is dead; and a gang of thugs lurks nightly in the swamp at the bottom of their garden. The house is guarded by intimidating spirits, not least of which is Charlie the swamp owl who occasionally, fleetingly, transmutes into a dragon.
Mary takes on responsibility for the two old ladies, and enlists the aid of a number of colourful characters - Penny the inspired cook, with her devoted duck Debbie; Sandra Forbes, the luxury-loving, efficient secretary to the scheming nephew; Greenhut the reclusive gardener; Jonathon Crow the art and antiquities expert; and many more.
This warm, good-humoured story is a fantasy for adults in which themes of environmental threat, the renaissance of old age, female efficiency, the joys of art and the pursuit of evil are entertainingly intertwined.
