The silver bees are fighting back against crime and vandalism in their neighborhoods, mainly by turning themselves into walking booby traps. "If we can't save ourselves from attack," they say, "then at least the criminals won't escape either!"

Hannah Meadows, a kindly old lady with a fondness for hats, is angry with her clever and manipulative grandson, Billy, whose gang attacked her sister's garden. Seeing how his behavior is destroying his family, she knows she must do something.

Hannah has her own guilty secret and, as her past comes back to haunt her, she finds herself torn between her anger and her hatred of violence; between her love of life and her desire to stop the bullies. How can she protect her family if she is not prepared to act?
Then there is Hannah's young neighbour, Declan, who is desperately in love with Billy's sister...

"The build-up to the finale of this carefully plotted story is absorbingly brilliant. This book is a work of art..." Mary Ann Smyth in Bookloons.com

"Right to the end the tension... is kept up... This book made me reflect on my own attitudes to menaces in my community." Harry Goode, Secretary Cambridge Writers

EXCERPT

From Chapter 26 p.155 "If Curly and Declan could stand up to the mob, then why couldn't she? She had some natural advantages, after all. It was true what Violet said about old women having the perfect camouflage. It meant nobody would notice what you were planning. Nobody could see your rage."

FROM DANA'S SUICIDE NOTE: Chapter 33 p.198: "You thought we were past it. You thought we were at your mercy and you could do anything you liked, while we cowered behind our curtains, too terrified to venture out. But you were wrong, wrong, wrong!