St. Martha's College, Cambridge, had been staggering along on a shoestring for decades. Then alumna Alice Toon leaves her old school a huge fortune. The dons immediately fall to fighting over the spoils. The Virgins, led by Dame Maud, believe the bequests should be spent on scholarships. The Dykes -- fewer in number but better streetfighters--want to raise a center of Gender and Ethnic Studies. The Old Women (mostly men) dream of fine vintages to be laid down in a decent new wine cellar. Impasse!
They've reckoned without the Bursar, Jack Troutbeck. She elects to infiltrate her own agent, Robert Amiss, a former civil servant with a talent for sorting things out. No sooner does he arrive on the scene where the Virgins are getting the upper hand than Dame Maud is murdered, leading us into ''An acidly funny romp... Superbly bitchy on the none-too-fragrant groves of academe.''--Mike Ripley, Daily Telegraph
From Publishers Weekly
This sixth outing for former civil servant and amateur sleuth Robert Amiss finds him installed in a one-year fellowship at threadbare St. Martha's Women's College, Cambridge, thanks to rough, tough Ida ''Jack'' Troutbeck, the college bursar and an old friend. Arguing over a recent multimillion-dollar bequest, the faculty is divided into three camps, crudely labeled by Jack as ''Virgins, Dykes and Old Women.'' The first, the academics loyal to the presiding Mistress, are under attack by the Dykes, who, led by two women professors, want the money used for a Gender and Ethnic Studies Center. The Old Women are men, including a wimpy embroidery expert and a cleric, desiring nothing more than updated, cushy quarters. High feelings and hot words escalate. The Mistress is murdered, bringing the police, who are under the bumbling direction of a Bible-quoting ignoramus inspector totally at sea in this milieu. A second killing occurs before the inspector, with some quiet guidance from Amiss, makes an almost perfunctory arrest. Detection and suspense take a back seat to Edwards's (Clubbed to Death) acidly witty send-up of feminists, dumb cops and all matters politically correct.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
''The clever plot takes second place to the ebullience of the writing and spot-on inventiveness of the satire.''-Marcel Berlins, The Times