Dover is a Scotland Yard detetive. Not a very good one. About as incompetent and venal as it is possible to be and retain the income - if not the due respect - of a Detective Chief Inspector.
Dover - with an astonishingly posh (and disapproving) side-kick gets told off for all the least promising cases for which the Yard are called in.
This is but the first of at least seven adventures - which make poor Frost look like a straight man, and Claude Eustace Teal like the Patron Saint of All Detectives. Prepare to weep with laughter, ache with it even, as Joyce Porter describes the progress of a buffoon in boots!