The Wyndham Case [Hardcover]

Jill Paton Walsh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 1993

St. Agatha's College in Cambridge, England, provides the setting for nurse Imogen Quy's investigation into a series of deaths connected to the special library called the Wyndham Case, which has a strange and possibly violent legacy.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The author of such acclaimed children's books as Gaffer Samson's Luck introduces an exemplary amateur sleuth in her fourth adult novel. Imogen Quy, who as a small child was taken to tea with E. M. Forster, is the college nurse at St. Agatha's College, Cambridge. Compassionate, intelligent and capable, Imogen (her last name rhymes with why ) is a kind young woman who believes in thinking things through. When a brilliant scholarship student is found dead in a pool of blood in Wyndham Case, a small library established by a 17th-century bequest, Imogen not only helps the police solve the case but also clears the dead boy of suspicion of theft. To do so, she weaves together threads involving a missing priceless book, a medical student drowned in a fountain, a professor imprisoned in a dungeon, feuding librarians, unrequited (and requited) love and a student on the run. In spite of a few frayed patches in the plot's fabric, Walsh produces a clear, sequential mystery, unmuddied by extraneous elements, whose intricate plot is resolved with surprising revelations in the final chapters--all related with precision, grace and a lovely sense of place.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

A first appearance for Imogen Quy (rhymes with ``why''), an English school nurse with a flair for detection. She lives and works in Cambridge, at St. Agatha's College, where routine academic life is roiled by the death of student Philip Skellow--found dead on the floor of the locked Wyndham Case--a highly specialized library overseen by foppish Crispin Mountressing, who's an overpaid object of envy and contempt to Imogen's friend Roger Rumbold, director of the college's ``real'' library. Philip shared living quarters with campus hotshot Jack Taverham, now suddenly vanished, whose upper-class background and adoring friends contrasted sharply with Philip's bumpkin ways, making him the butt of cruel jokes--one of which may have led to his death. No joke was involved in the murder of third-year med student Felicity Marshall, but the message she left before she died helps lead Imogen and her policeman friend Mike Parsons to an obsessed killer and to the happy resolution of some troubling lesser problems on campus. A leisurely, literate style, an intriguing clutch of academic eccentrics, a clever puzzle, and a sharply intelligent sleuth whose gentleness sets her apart from the hard-edged aggressions of her fictional contemporaries--all in a refreshing debut in the Sayers tradition. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books (June 15, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312094205
• ISBN-13: 978-0312094201
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #667,402 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unknown classic, June 18, 2005

By 

hmf22 (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wyndham Case (Hardcover)

A charming, learned murder mystery by an author who deserves to be better known than she is. Walsh blends a contemporary setting (a Cambridge college in the 1990s) with a style reminiscent of such grande dames as Dorothy Sayers and Josephine Tey. Rich character development and some intriguing historical asides.