J.W. Wells seemed to be a respectable establishment, but the company now paying Paul Carpenter's salary is in fact a deeply sinister organisation with a mighty peculiar management team. Paul thought he was getting the hang of it (particularly when he fell head over heels for his strangely alluring colleague Sophie), but death is never far away when you work at J.W. Wells. Unlike the stapler — that's always going awol. Our lovestruck hero is about to discover that custard is definitely in the eye of the beholder. And that it really stings. Tom Holt's exceedingly comic fantasies are populated with evil goblins, annoying sprites and people like us. However, it's not always possible to tell the difference.

Ever been offered a promotion that seems too good to be true? You know — the sort they’d be insane to be offering to someone like you. The kind where you snap their arm off to accept, then wonder why all your long-serving colleagues look secretly relieved, as if they’re off some strange and unpleasant hook … It’s the kind of trick that deeply sinister companies like J.W. Wells & Co. pull all the time. Especially with employees who are too busy mooning over the office intern to think about what they’re getting into. And it’s why, right about now, Paul Carpenter is wishing he’d paid much less attention to the gorgeous Melze, and rather more to a little bit of job description small-print referring to ‘pest’ control …