Barry Wapping has been delivering post in the same West Yorkshire town since 1982. He knows his patch better than anyone. Mrs Hopper was one of his favourites, so when Barry arrives with a bundle of condolence cards only to find her daughter already at the door - house up for sale, mail redirected overnight, everything tidied away at suspicious speed - he can't let it go. What begins as professional instinct slowly becomes something more entangling: a property agent with a troubling marital history, a string of unexplained disappearances, and a woman who may not be who she claims to be. Barry, postal widower and most unlikely of sleuths, is an indelible creation.