Enid Blyton for Grown-ups

It is the night of the referendum and the Five have retired to Kirrin Island to enjoy the fresh air and sunshine, fed up with the rancour of public debate. George is firmly a 'remainer', whilst Julian, who is in the 'Brexit' camp, is tolerated on the grounds that Anne cannot bear to go camping without him. (Timmy, largely apolitical but not keen on cats or rabbits, joins them too.) The night is tempestuous in more ways than one.

The Five have gone on their greatest adventure yet - to become an even better team! They are booked into an exciting hotel right next to the jolly motorway services, where the nice (if somewhat nervous and sweating and depressed) man teaches them a number of exercises that will make them work better. But wait! Who's been sneaking messages through the hotel dumb waiter about secret assignations? Is there a smuggler's plot afoot? Or is Shelly from Production shagging Postroom Luke?

Julian, Anne, Dick, George and Timmy are all feeling really rather rum, and it's been going on for days. Nothing seems to work, and with their doctors mystified, they're driven to trying out various expedients to cure themselves. Julian goes online to self-diagnose that he's got pancreatic cancer, bird flu and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. Anne decides that the old methods are the best and decides to have herself exorcised - which proves to be an awful lot of bother for everyone, and such a mess.

Bringing up a baby would surely be kid's play for The Five. How hard could it possibly be?! When the doorbell rings one Saturday afternoon, the last thing the Five were expecting to find on their doorstep was a baby... But the Five are next of kin to Cousin Rupert and his wife, so when they find themselves in a spot of bother and are destined for a short spell behind bars, Anne, Dick, George and Anne are the first port of call. First, it's the fear and the tiredness that kicks in.

Five old friends set about this simple task and find all of a sudden that: the days are longer; they get to see each other for who they really are; the empty laughter of ordinary conversation is so much harder to fake. Yes, they're saving money and losing weight, but the world itself seems to take on a slow, dreary inevitability. Soon they begin to snap at each other, and then fight - until they begin to wonder, have the Five at last found the challenge that will defeat them?