The music stopped thirty years ago. The search has just begun.

Fifty-two-year-old Martin Ellis lives a life completely set in its groove. He spends his quiet Worcester evenings alone inside a shrinking world of dwindling print shop margins, the realities of his father’s failing memory, and a vast collection of vintage jazz records. It is a safe, completely predictable existence designed to keep the world at bay, until Chloe Winter calls with a voice from a past he has spent three decades trying to forget.

Her father, Terry Winter, is dying in St Richard's Hospice, and he has one final, impossible request. Before he dies, he wants Martin to find an original pressing of a mythical 1968 jazz album that collectors believe is a total ghost. Reluctantly drawn into the hunt, Martin is forced out of his solitary routine and thrust back into a world of obsessive collectors, eccentric record fairs, and a dangerous, decades-old mystery involving a missing record label owner.

But as the needle drops on old secrets, Martin realises the real search isn't for the music at all. Moving from the quiet suburbs of Worcester to late-night confrontations and the bittersweet memories of an old local pub, he must finally confront the bitter pride that fractured his oldest friendship.

Poignant, witty, and deeply nostalgic, The Trouble with Terry Winter is a powerful story about second chances, the weight of unresolved regrets, and the music that saves us before it’s too late.