British author Walsh, praised for her seamless work completing two posthumous works by Dorothy Sayers (the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries Thrones, Dominations
and A Presumption of Death
), demonstrates her mastery of the modern academic mystery with her fourth whodunit (after 2006's Debts of Dishonor
) featuring nurse Imogen Quy, who serves unobtrusively but effectively at the fictional St. Agatha's College of Cambridge University. Quy witnesses the final moments of John Talentire, a college fellow who topples to his death while daredevil climbing a building. The death appears to be an accident until one of Talentire's friends uses an amateur staging of Hamlet
—the obscure, shorter version known as the Bad Quarto
—to dramatically imply that another fellow murdered Talentire by untying his safety rope. Quy sleuths amid the vicious world of modern Shakespearean scholarship to put the pieces together in a manner that would do Harriet Vane proud. Both Sayers fans and lovers of traditional fair play should embrace this excellent read. (Apr.)
