The story of the book follows that of three characters who travel from England to Switzerland in order to retrieve the world's most expensive clarinet.

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The clarinet has been bought by Harris Beadlesby, a secondary school music teacher, who sees it as the tool he needs to win over the father of the woman he wants to marry. However, in getting it back from an auction in Italy to the UK without having to worry about paying British import duties, a friend of his managed to lose it on the Upper Grindelwald Glacier in the Canton of Bern in Switzerland.

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Harris is a man of principle (not counting the question of UK import duties) but not very practical (which is putting it mildly). He also has the problem of being tied to his school thanks to an accidental misdemeanour involving an assault on a pensioner, the death of her skateboarding dog and an exploding boat. It was all his fault but none of it intentional. Hence retrieving the clarinet is beyond him.

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He does, however, tutor Alice Morrison, a fifteen-year-old pupil, in piano. Alice is the niece of Jessica Morriston (not a typo), a professional translator and dedicated hiker who loves the Swiss Alps. While not overly impressed by the largely incompetent Harris, she agrees to help him reach the glacier where the clarinet has been lost. By faking Alice's participation in the finals of a young pianists' contest, they gain five days when Harris can be absent from his workplace. Jessica works out how, in theory, they can reach Switzerland, retrieve the clarinet, and return.

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As with any good story, the theory doesn't quite match the reality. They reach Interlaken, which is the main hub for reaching the various mountain ranges, passes and valleys in that part of the Bernese Highlands. At that point, the plan starts to go off the rails. A series of misadventures and awkward encounters follows. An episode of illegal paragliding earns them the attention of the local law enforcement, which is not helped when Jessica nearly decapitates a few individuals while accidentally water-skiing down a lake or supposedly molests a local teenager in the town of Spiez. After a series of escapades, they do eventually make it over the border to France without being apprehended and another series of unfortunate incidents ensues across the French rail network and the air corridor between Lyon, France and Bristol, UK. They return successfully to England but the question remains, what happens to the big plan, or what's left of it, then ? 

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If you want to have that question answered, you're going to need to read the book or at least find someone who has.