Book description
St. Martha's College, Cambridge, had been staggering along on a
shoestring for decades. Then alumna Alice Toon leaves her old school a
huge fortune. The dons immediately fall to fighting over the spoils. The
Virgins, led by Dame Maud Theodosia Buckbarrow, believe the bequests
should be spent on scholarships. The Dykes-fewer in number but better
street fighters-want to raise a center of Gender and Ethnic Studies. The
Old Women (mostly men) dream of fine vintages to be laid down in a
decent new wine cellar. Impasse! They've reckoned without the Bursar,
Jack Troutbeck. She elects to infiltrate this maelstrom of politics with
her own agent, Robert Amiss, a former civil servant with a talent for
sorting things out. No sooner does he arrive on the scene where the
Virgins are getting the upper hand than Dame Maud is murdered, leading
into what Mike Ripley of The Daily Telegraph described as: “An acidly
funny romp... Superbly bitchy on the none-too-fragrant groves of
academe.” Dr Ruth Dudley Edwards was born and brought up in Dublin,
Ireland. Since she graduated she has lived in England, where she has
been a teacher, a Cambridge postgraduate student, a marketing executive,
a civil servant and, finally, a freelance writer, journalist and
broadcaster. An historian and prize-winning biographer, her recent
non-fiction includes the authorized history of The Economist, a portrait
of the British Foreign Office and a book about the newspaper world of
the mid-twentieth century. She uses her knowledge of the British
establishment in her satirical crime novels: targets so far include the
civil service, gentlemen's clubs, Cambridge colleges, the House of
Lords, the Church of England, publishing, literary prizes and - always -
political correctness. She has three times been short-listed for awards
from the Crime Writers' Association. www. ruthdudleyedwards. com
