DS Emma Saint and Ben Czinner are looking forward to a relaxing holiday on the Northumberland coast. But they find violent strangers in their host's house, and the host himself missing. Over the following days they embark on a desperate quest. The trail leads the to the historic ramparts of Berwick upon Tweed and Bamburgh, the isolation of Holy Island and the bustle of Alnwick, with its bookshop and Garden Treehouse. Searching for a lost manuscript that has the potential to topple both government and monarchy. A search beset with urgency and danger, for others engaged in the pursuit are ruthless and will stop at thing. The object of their quest, Samuel Pepys's lost rthern diary, may hold the key to an audacious historical deception involving the legend of the King in the North and the historic Percy family. A cover-up that has lain undetected in Shakespeare's plays and which is w being used by unscrupulous figures to plan an unthinkable terrorist outrage. An enjoyable mix of secret codes, suspicious characters and clever literary pastiche, The Pepys Memorandum is a light-hearted but thought provoking race around rth-east England, culminating in a nail-biting climax atop the grandeur of Durham Cathedral.