“If business didn’t pick up soon, we’d be staring into the abyss of what economists might call ‘totally screwed’.”

But as chance would have it, Max Dempsey and Partners: Funeral Directors are about to be saved from financial ruin by a mysterious stranger with a wad of cash. It was the first time they’d been asked to collect a body from France, but what could possibly go wrong?

For a start, the body in question isn’t at all what they’d been expecting, and all of a sudden Max and his partners find themselves catapulted into a world of espionage, blackmail, kidnapping, double-dealing and Russian assassins.

The name’s Dempsey. Max Dempsey. Shaken, stirred and totally freaked out.