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After twenty-five years as a policeman, Detective Inspector Henry Crabbe wants to retire and open his restaurant Pie In The Sky, with his accountant wife Margaret as cashier/bookkeeper.A week before exchanging contracts he is shot in the leg by suave fraudster Dudley Hooperman. He is visited in hospital by A.C.C. Freddy Fisher,his police academy contemporary, who blames him for letting Hooperman escape and suspends him from duty until further notice. The suspension means that, as a non-serving officer, he does not have the option to resign. Woman constable Cambridge cannily notes that Crabbe has often cracked cases for which Fisher took the credit, hence the decision. Henry nonetheless presses ahead with his plan, buying hens to whom he plays Elgar and finding a vegetable supplier, Henderson, and an assistant chef in Steve Turner, a young ex-con who shares his passion for food. Henry is set up by a corrupt colleague, Skinner, paid by Hooperman to make it look as if Henry is taking a bribe. Skinner is killed in a car accident and his guilt exposed after which Fisher offers Henry "the best of both worlds". He exonerates him from all blame over the Hooperman affair provided he stays on as a policeman in addition to running the restaurant.

As Pie in the Sky nears its opening night Henry and Sophia Cambridge are involved in the hunt for missing Detective Constable Ken Shipley. They locate him, via a journalist,in a hotel,where he has gone into hiding and appears paranoid. He gives Henry a tape which supposedly links high-ranking policeman Barry Simmonds with the theft of four million pounds in bullion but the tape is a fake and Mrs.Shipley tells Henry her husband, once best friends with Simmonds, is now insanely jealous of his career success and will do anything to bring him down. The tape does, however,expose overtime irregularities and Henry uses it to 'persuade' Freddy Fisher to offer Shipley an amnesty. The restaurant's opening night is a huge success, due in part to quick-thinking new waiter John, who has come to Henry from the hotel.

A specialist surveillance team, led by heavy-footed Chief Inspector Fields, stake out the restaurant. Entrepreneur and train enthusiast Duncan Spellar, a regular customer, is expected to bribe M.P. Julian Tubbs in order to secure the local railway franchise and the team are gleefully hoping to catch him in the act. Duncan is aware that he is being followed but Henry cannot let him in on the secret even though he likes him. However, when the clumsy team take over the restaurant and antagonize the staff, Henry feels no compunction in sabotaging the operation so that Duncan can be seen to be an innocent man.

With Fisher at a conference for a week, Henry is free to concentrate on planning a gourmet evening for a group of prospective Japanese investors in the town but gets side-tracked when he sees supposedly long dead villain Vince Palmer, now using an assumed name. Palmer comes clean but Henry is bribed with the offer of retirement provided that he keeps quiet. The dilemma weighs heavily on his mind and he is late for the Japanese evening,but Margaret steps into the breach and turns it into a success and events are taken out of his hands regarding Palmer even though it means kissing his retirement goodbye.

Henry investigates when charter pilot Guy Featherstone is found shot in his office. The place is crawling with edible snails, which Featherstone and his co-pilot Bentley exported for businessman - and former drug smuggler - Leonard Roston. Fisher is convinced that drugs are again being smuggled and makes a fool of himself on television but dog hairs on the corpse links the airline to a nearby boarding kennel and a racket to evade quarantine, and a call to Featherstone's doctor wraps up the case for Henry.

Fisher's 'research' project sends Henry and Sophia Cambridge to the nearby village of Wychwold, allegedly to assess public opinion of the police. However, Henry guesses - rightly - that this is Fisher's way of getting him to investigate the suspicious death of Dilip Patel, a philanthropist about to turn the ailing country club into a public leisure centre. Henry arrests the culprit and visits a culinary heroine whilst Steve solves a burglary from the restaurant.

With Fisher on a week's vacation Henry wants to use the time to perfect his passion-fruit sorbet. However his love-lorn dry cleaner Alec involves him in rescuing his fiancee from her crazed ex-partner and he has to help Steve, who keeps getting arrested due to a dodgy friend from the past.

Henry investigates a ram-raid at Ernest Drummond's wine warehouse whilst Margaret acts as caretaker for another wine importer, George Porter, married to her old school friend Rosie, after George has been run over. George once worked for Drummond and Margaret uncovers a complicated scam involving George and several worthies, one of whom - fortunately for the Crabbes - is the rival restauranteur who sent an officious health inspector to close down Pie in the Sky.

The dismembered body of Claudette Thierry, who went missing eighteen years previously, is dug up on farmland and French detective Marianne Dupont is brought in to help Henry re-open the enquiry. At the time Fisher, then an inspector, convicted labourer Gary Bourne who confessed to the murder but Henry and Marianne start to doubt his guilt and suspect that he is covering up for a dead friend.

Level Earth conservationists target the chief engineer of a new motorway link road and disable a bull-dozer. Told to catch them Henry finds that the protesters number some very respectable people including Margaret and Henderson, who is sheltering the leading activist.When he discovers evidence that a thuggish security boss has been sending heavies to intimidate the protesters Henry gets the chance to put one over on the construction company and Fisher and strike his blow for free speech.