Lorac's regular sleuth Inspector "Jock" Macdonald here finds that to solve the mystery of a disappearance, he needs to make a journey to the farming country in the North-West of England. His clues are superficially trivial to start with - some missing items from a remote cottage belonging to farmer Giles Hoggett, including the iron dogs (in the sense of fire-dogs) of the title. However, by his usual painstaking methods he soon finds that they've been used to conceal a body. The suspects include some local potters (a dialect term for tinkers) and a feckless artist, together with the landowners and others. The author obviously knew and loved this area (she set several books here) and this gives strength to the narrative, but the solution is also satisfying, including a brilliant example of a concealed clue. ( )