Richard Cadogan poet & would-be bon vivant arrives for what he thinks will be a relaxing holiday in the city of dreaming spires. Late one night however he discovers the dead body of an elderly woman lying in a toyshop & is coshed on the head. When he comes to he finds that the toyshop has disappeared & been replaced with a grocery store. The police are understandably skeptical of this tale but Richards former schoolmate Gervase Fen (Oxford Professor of English Language & Literature) knows that truth is stranger than fiction (in fiction at least). Soon the intrepid duo is careening around town in hot pursuit of clues but just when they think they understand what has happened the disappearing-toyshop mystery takes a sharp turn...