Patricia Enid Guppy is in a pickle. With the aid of her husband, Benjamin, she has lied, swindled and blackmailed her way into positions of power and influence, ruining reputations and lives along the way whilst maintaining an outward show of respectability, for most of her eighty years of life. But when Benjamin is silly enough to go and get himself killed, Pat is left to fend for herself. Now, throughout the town of Sea View, people are beginning to talk, fingers are being pointed and mud is being thrown... and some of it is finally beginning to stick. Can hosting the Sea View Festival of Culture, with its over-sixties sequined talent show and display of sculpted sponges, return her to her former state of glory? Or will Pat's desperate crusade to recapture her past majesty, and the heady days of being crowned Queen of Sea View Parsnip Drive, prove to be the cause of her undoing?