This casablantasy magimurder mystery details the case of the High Town Hacker and how Franklin "Stubby" Mynos made his name in bringing the real killer to justice. With the help of Bob, the angsty teenage necromancer apprentice, and Rhys, the sentient letter opener made in the shape of a broadsword out of magical spite, Frank finds himself in a labyrinth of double talking Guildspeople and professional criminals.

After being hired to track down a missing dead body - the recently drowned Ashley Ash from the powerful Body Politic Registry - Frank is drawn into the hunt for a serial killer in Hightown. The problem is not so much the killings, but the disruption to the City financial landscape. When the City Watch’s Magicrime Analysis Division (MAD) and the Guilstapo (even madder) come up with a scapegoat suspect to settle the City traders down, Frank finds out what has really happened and goes about righting the wrongs.

But the wrongs want to remain unrighted. The Guilstapo, the Klann, freelance musclemen like "Downright" Badd, rogue elements of the Body Politic and the Trark Guard (not to mention the magicar hire company . . .) all want a piece of the be-spectacled, meek and mild, cerebral minotaur with a love for facts and a rather unfashionable hatred of injustice. Culminating in a far from typical medieval-trial-by-combat/Perry Mason-esque conclusion, Frank’s future fame is assured, if not a long and peaceful life, as Chair and Master (and only member) of the newly formed Especial Investigators' Guild.

'Missing, Presumed Undead' is told from Rhys’ jaded and terminally cynical point of view in his own streetwise style. He has many further stories to tell of his days with Frank - his most cherished "attune-ee". Casablantasy is a hybrid genre combining an original mix of 30’s detective "Casablanca" atmosphere and "maginology" (magic-technology) with a darkly humorous classical fantasy backdrop (shaken, not stirred).