In this sophisticated novel of suspense, a killer with a taste for literature lurks in the shadows of Oxford University . . .

After a student is found decapitated in the cupola of the Sheldonian Theatre and a cryptic note in an unknown language is discovered, DS Kate Stewart and her partner turn to medievalist Dr. Jonathan Reynolds. He identifies the note as a passage from Beowulf and explains that the murder replicates a killing in the epic poem.

Then a second, equally grisly murder escalates the situation. The victim is Tom, Jonathan’s former student and stalker. Horrified, Jonathan identifies the crime’s literary connection to another early English poem. Is the killer obsessed with medieval times—or with Jonathan? When another death suggests that a serial killer is working his way through the English Literature syllabus, both the police and the scholar are drawn into a baffling mystery . . .