Winner of the Sunday Times' Best Crime novel of the year, Desmond Cory returns with a near-perfect mystery novel , written with intelligence and laced with wit.

For John Dobie, absent-minded maths professor, the death of a student provokes bewilderment, but little else. Who was Sammy Cantwell, after all?

But being drugged, tied up and made witness to another murder forces his usually dormant curiosity, especially when the murdered woman turns out to be his errant wife.

With the discovery of a second murdered woman in his bed in the space of a few hours, it is obvious he needs help. The police? No, help from someone with sense. Who better than the ex-student's agreeable landlady, pathologist Kate Coyle, to mould him, albeit unwillingly, into amateur sleuth?