According to certain Cambridge scholars, the locked library of St Agatha’s College is home to an unrivalled – and deeply uninteresting – collection of seventeenth century volumes.

It also contains one dead student.

At first glance it seems like a tragic accident – even if malicious rumours suggest that Philip Skellow had been stealing books rather than acquiring knowledge when he’d slipped, banged his head, and bled to death overnight.

Only Imogen Quy, the college nurse, has her doubts. And before long, another student is found, drowned in an ornamental fountain . . .

‘A jewel in the traditional English detective mode . . . Ms. Morse has arrived’ – Observer