Inland, Illicit And Incompetent

While working on the introduction of VAT, Nick Storey is asked to advise HQ staff looking at an experiment of an inland clearance depot (ICD). Regarding it as risky, he suggests various ways of minimising smuggling, including periodic inspections. When he joins the HQ staff on their inspection, it's plain that the controls are lax. Doing some unofficial investigation with Rosemary, they discover lorries using the ICD involved in smuggling scotch whisky and subsequently cigarettes. Complications occur, as the Chief Inspector's Office and the local Collection become embroiled and a Senior Inspector disappears, thought murdered and a warehouse employee beaten to a pulp. But it turns out that diamonds smuggled in African artefacts provide the way to identifying a violent and dangerous crook, who plans to take his revenge on Nick."Inland, Illicit & Incompetent" is the thirtieth-first book published in a series of detective stories set mostly in HM Customs & Excise, by Richard Hernaman Allen, a former Commissioner