Henry Blain, a sixty-something Liverpudlian, is prison cook, Shakespeare lover, and a murderer. The prison he works in is called Strangeways, and his love affair, with a 50-year-old reporter, takes place against the backdrop of the 1990 seige. At first vilified by the prisoners—who understandably blame him for the quality of the food they're served and devastate his garden with missiles flung from the roof—Blain later becomes their hero. Along the way we learn he has murdered two of his wives, one mistress, and a blackmailer, and buried them in the garden. A meditation on food and digestion, with a large measure of sex and fantasy, and a handful of murders thrown in, this is an anarchic, funny, irreverent novel.