An "invitation to dine" quickly loses a letter as DI John Redfyre returns for his second investigation in the hallowed halls of Cambridge academia. 1923- Five Cambridge college dons host a monthly dinner club in secret. Their sixth man, always a stranger, is destined to make only one appearance. He is carefully selected the day of each party as the dons scour the streets to find their next target-a vagrant, perhaps, who looks like he could use a nice meal. He is handed a formal invitation, then appears at dinner only to be psychologically tormented for the evening by the dons' cutting wit. The man with the highest number of killing shots is awarded a cup at the end of the night. Then the dons' most recent guest, a former officer in the turn-of-the-century Boer War, is found strangled with hints of a sumptuous last meal in his stomach. Detective Inspector John Redfyre's investigation takes him into the halls of notoriously elite and secretive St. Jude's College-unfamiliar territory, even for a man of his breeding. As he contends with five suspects, each powerful and formidably clever, he must determine whether their parties are merely pretentious sadism, or one or more of the dons has more sinister mechanisms at play.

Author Biography

Barbara Cleverly was born in the north of England and is a graduate of Durham University. A former teacher, she has spent her working life in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk; she now lives in Cambridge. She is the author of thirteen books in the Joe Sandilands series, including The Last Kashmiri Rose, The Blood Royal, Not My Blood, A Spider in the Cup, Enter Pale Death, and Diana's Altar, and one other John Redfyre novel, Fall of Angels.