Fall of angels, hardcover/barbara cleverly

Barbara Cleverly, bestselling author of the Joe Sandilands series, introduces an ingenious new sleuth who navigates 1920s Cambridge, a European intellectual capital on the cusp of dramatic change.

England 1923: Detective Inspector John Redfyre is a godsend to the Cambridge CID.

The ancient university city is at war with itself: town versus gown, male versus female, press versus the police force and everyone versus the undergraduates.

Redfyre, young, handsome and capable, is a survivor of the Great War.

Born and raised among the citys colleges, he has access to the educatedlite who run these institutions, a society previously deemed impenetrable by local law enforcement.

When Redfyres Aunt Hetty hands him a front-row ticket to the years St.

Barnabas College Christmas concert, he is looking forward to a right merrie yuletide noyse from a trumpet soloist, accompanied by the organ.

He is intrigued to find that the trumpet player is--scandalously--a young woman.

And Juno Proudfoot is a beautiful and talented one at that.

Such choice of a performer is unacceptable in conservative academic circles.

Redfyre finds himself anxious throughout a performance in which Juno charms and captivates her audience, and his unease proves well founded when she tumbles headlong down a staircase after curtainfall.

He finds evidence that someone carefully planned her death.

Has her showing provoked a dangerous, vengeful woman-hater to take action? When more Cambridge women are murdered, Redfyre realizes that some of his dearest friends and his family may become targets, and--equally alarmingly--that the killer might be within his own close circle.