A warm welcome to “Colonel Moya’s Guest” the “First Cake” in “The Silence of the Jams” Saga. A saga in four cakes and numerous slices.

All is not well in the “green and pleasant land” that is Wharfedale. Mrs Earnshaw, the redoubtable if somewhat obsessive president of the Ilkley WI, suspects that it is foul play of the lowest kind by her nearest rivals the Otley WI that has toppled Ilkley’s Victoria Sponge from its rightful place as the champion of all the local baking competitions. But can she prove it? Like heck she can! But people like Mrs Earnshaw don’t give up!

Our story opens with Mrs Earnshaw and her husband George being interviewed in her small front room by Commander O’Brian of MI6 in the presence of his impassive Russian counterpart Colonel Moshenikov about precisely what Mrs Earnshaw has been up to in her quest to unmask Otley’s double dealing and how on earth  the Russian Security Services became involved!

Fast forward two years. Lady Catherine Smethurst, formerly MI6’s head of covert foreign operations but now retired, is the chair of the newly established Internal Security Committee for the WI.  She is about to hitch an urgent lift to Yorkshire on an RAF helicopter. She needs to find out why Edna, the president of the Otley WI, has been detained in Cartagena on the Caribbean coast of Colombia and is now the “guest” of Colonel Alberto Moya the regional prefect of police. As Lady Catherine knows  Moya has a reputation for being a very nasty and corrupt man on a continent famed for its nasty men. Moya is not the kind of man to trouble himself with middle-aged English women with expired tourist visas. If Moya is interested in Edna, then she is a woman in deep trouble and Lady Catherine needs to find out why and fast!

Come to Yorkshire with Lady Catherine as she tries to find out what in heaven’s name has been going on in the local WI and what they were really doing in Colombia. Arrive at Askwith village primary school, half-way between Otley and Ilkley, during the summer holidays where Mavis the deputy president of Otley WI and deputy head of the village school has opened it up for use by Lady Catherine as she pursues her quest.

Meet Maria the half-Spanish, half-Irish “defrocked” nun whose methods for making a difference in the world are “less than orthodox”. Meet Maria’s sidekicks: Louise the seventy-plus silver-haired widowed granny who can rock climb, kayak, parachute and you name it! Aud, the seemingly timid Otley librarian who is a whizz at on-line research with global connections to other librarians and archivists worldwide as well as being an avid petrolhead. Sue the dry humoured world-weary office manageress with the dodgy soon to-be- ex-husband who can organise anyone and anything and last, but very very far from being least, Aud’s partner Maud, the larger-than-life irrepressible motor mechanic extraordinaire and motorcycle-cum-heavy-metal aficionado who can get anything mechanical to work or stop it working given half a chance.

Together Maria and her crew form the Otley WI’s Awkward Brigade and for the last few years they have as Lady Catherine is about to discover, been changing the world whether it likes it or not.

Learn about the Awkward Brigade’s escapades with a tuk tuk in Myanmar, a hearse in the Congo and, most importantly, Colombia.  Discover why the odious Colonel Moya has detained Edna as his “guest” at his ominous headquarters inside Santa Cristobal the Spanish colonial fort located on the inner harbour walls of the old City of Cartagena.

Can Lady Catherine persuade a reluctant Maria and her friends that Edna really does need rescuing even if Edna doesn’t think so and no one else appears that keen to get her back? With the clock ticking is there anyway they can rescue Edna from under Colonel Moya’s nose from more than 5,000 miles away before it is too late?

Meanwhile, ever on the alert Mrs Earnshaw is biding her time, watching and waiting for her moment when Otley’s double dealing will be unmasked and justice will be served!