Crafts and Life

Summer, 1936. The writer, Josephine Tey, joins her friends in the holiday village of Portmeirion to celebrate her fortieth birthday. Alfred Hitchcock and his wife, Alma Reville, are there to sign a deal to film Josephine's novel, A Shilling for Candles, and Hitchcock has one or two tricks up his sleeve to keep the holiday party entertained – and expose their deepest fears.

But things get out of hand when one of Hollywood's leading actresses is brutally slashed to death in a cemetery near the village. The following day, as fear and suspicion take over in a setting where nothing – and no one – is quite what it seems, Chief Inspector Archie Penrose becomes increasingly unsatisfied with the way the investigation is ultimately resolved. Several years later, another horrific murder, again linked to a Hitchcock movie, drives Penrose back to the scene of the original crime to uncover the shocking truth.

Josephine Tey is staying at Portmeirion along with Archie, Marta, Lydia, Ronnie and Lettice (they are all there to celebrate Josephine's birthday).  As well as this group Alfred Hitchcock, his wife and various actors, actresses and film crew are also there, apparently Hitchcock has a rather interesting "gag" planned (as well as trying to get the rights to film Josephine's book "A Shilling for Candles"), but it all changes when the day after they all meet two people are brutally murdered.  Archie and Josephine have to accept the fact that they (along with every one else) is a suspect, but neither Archie nor Josephine accept the easy result the Welsh police latch on to.