The Burleigh school was dying. It would be called a mercy killing were it not for the little band of inept, eccentric, or otherwise unemployable teachers who depended on this absolutely awful English boys’ academy for their meagre livelihoods. A lack of funds, facilities, and foresight had brought Burleigh to the very edge of extinction. Now someone planned to give it one final, deadly push.

Malice was afoot behind the ivied walls, trailing hard on the heels of Hilary Frome, Headmaster Crumwallis’s unfortunate choice for the next headboy. For when something sinister popped up in the punch on Parents’ Evening, when nasty pranks became no joke, the next event at bloody Burleigh was bound to be . . . simply murder.

‘Crackerjack entertainment . . . deserves the kind of raves heaped up on his other prize whodunits.’ Publishers Weekly

‘There is no one quite like Robert Barnard in his ability to combine chills and chuckles and to sprinkle the whole with delicious irony.’ San Diego Union

‘The wryest wit and most scathing satire in today’s mystery.’ Chicago Sun-Times

Robert Barnard is a well-established crime writer. He has won the prestigious Nero Wolfe Award as well as the Anthony, Agatha and Macavity Awards, has been nominated eight times for the Edgar Award and was the winner of the 2003 CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for a lifetime of achievement. He has also written crime novels under the pseudonym of Bernard Bastable. He lives with his wife in Leeds and has had over 45 titles published in the UK and US.