Mystery crime fiction written in the Golden Age of Murder
When Professor Julius Arnell breathes his last in the hushed atmosphere
of the British Museum Reading Room, it looks like death from natural
causes. Who, after all, would have cause to murder a retired academic
whose life was devoted to Elizabethan literature? Inspector Shelley's
suspicions are aroused when he finds a packet of poisoned sugared
almonds in the dead man's pocket; and a motive becomes clearer when he
discovers Arnell's connection to a Texan oil millionaire.
Soon another man plunges hundreds of feet into a reservoir on a
Yorkshire moor. What can be the connection between two deaths so
different, and so widely separated? The mild-mannered museum visitor
Henry Fairhurst adds his detective talents to Inspector Shelley's own,
and together they set about solving one of the most baffling cases
Shelley has ever encountered.