Death of a Don — Howard Shaw

Unabashed Anglophiles will thrill to the richly accented baritone and virtuosity of Graham Roberts. His theatricality adds the perfect note of pomposity to the Oxford dons of Beaufort College, making their provincial lives humorous, slightly ridiculous, and occasionally pathetic. When an irreplaceable manuscript is stolen from the college library, everyone is suddenly suspect, from students to faculty to a visiting scholar from America. Everyone is hiding something, and then the murders begin. Graham Roberts approaches Howard Shaw's entertaining mystery with congenial familiarity. DEATH OF A DON is a police procedural in which a pleasantly plodding police inspector, Inspector Barnaby, slowly but surely pieces together a deadly puzzle with extremely non-academic consequences.