In Jill Paton Walsh's fourth installment in her inspired continuation of Dorothy L. Sayers's acclaimed mysteries, Lord Peter Wimsey and his detective novelist wife, Harriet Vane, revisit their beloved Oxford, where a long and literate courtship finally culminated in their engagement.
To his surprise, Lord Peter, as the Duke of Denver, has been charged with settling a dispute among the Fellows of St. Severin's College, Oxford University. At first, the stalemate seems the result of a simple difference of opinion about a valuable manuscript. Some of the Fellows regard the book as nothing but an insurance liability that should be sold to finance a speculative purchase of land. The voting is evenly balanced. The Warden would normally cast the deciding vote, but he has disappeared. And when several of the Fellows die unexpectedly, Lord Peter and Harriet set off on an investigation to uncover what is really going on at St. Severin's.
With this return to the Oxford of
Gaudy Night,
which many readers regard as their favorite of Sayers's original series, Jill Paton Walsh revives the wit and brilliant plotting of the Golden Age of detective fiction with
The Late Scholar
.