The setting is an unidentified country, suffering from an unexpected outbreak of very large holes.

The McNally children find themselves in The Dell hotel surrounded by a strange assortment of ridiculous characters ranging from Charlie 'Twinkle Toes' Tweedy, the house detective, to Mr Peach, a ventriloquist with a conveniently-large moustache.

With young Fergal McNally falling to his death on page one, the only way for the McNallys is up...Expect the unexpected with Philip Ardagh pulling out all the stops that make his fiction so unique and so absurd.