Canadian historian Gillian Adams finds herself back in Cambridge. She's set to enjoy that lovely city in high summer--and her romance with Scotland Yard Detective Chief Inspector Edward Gisborne, even though he's tying up a child-killing case in Lambeth. Then the death of a research fellow in the Department of Chemistry shocks both the university and the town.
Gillian is linked to the victim through old friends and to the Cambridge police through Edward. Ideally placed to investigate Wendy Fowler's murder, she turns up evidence of venomous professional rivalries and at least one clandestine liaison. Not to mention that Wendy, a volunteer at the Pregnancy Information Service, is herself pregnant.
Then a second body turns up. There is no compelling evidence to link it to Wendy, nor to the motives ascribed to the suspects in her death. As the police sift the facts, Gillian looks at the crimes from a feminist perspective, seeing that that science, contemporary mores, and more conservative traditions have produced a volatile--indeed, fatal--mixture...