Fate Worse Than Death opens?on the sunniest day in half a century?with the news that someone has stolen Beryl Websdell?s garden gnome. However, things get less sunny very quickly, as it becomes apparent that Beryl?s daughter has also disappeared. Called in to handle the case, Inspector Quantrill and his deputy can?t shake their conviction that the villagers are engaged in an unusually chatty conspiracy of silence, and that something rather ugly is lurking in the petunias.