Bleak Expectations

Pip must enlist the help of his former nemesis to fight a new evil spreading terror and cake-crumbs through the streets of London.

In Volume Four Chapter the First "A Tolerable Life De-Happified", our hero Pip sees his former nemesis - the badly named Gently Benevolent - thwarted and locked up in a prison within a jail within a gaol spelled the other way, and apparently repentant of his crimes. But late one foggy night when Pip is attacked with a bowl of sinister custard he realises a new form of evil is stalking the streets of London, and he is obliged to ask for help from his erstwhile foe. Can Benevolent now be trusted? And who is the sinister evil figure?

Meanwhile, Pip's wife Ripely has become obsessed with cutlery, and the purchase of some diamond-handled dodo knives looks likely to force Pip into bankruptcy. And his best friend Harry Biscuit claims to be having terrible problems with an angry badger, but is it all as it seems?