An audio book.
It's set mostly in Cambridge. 1937, when Addenbrooke's was on Trumpington Street and The Evelyn Care Home (where one of the characters lives) was on Trumpington Road - a private hospital is there now.
Archie Penrose (London) is investigating a growing series of murders. It gradually emerges that the victims were all in the choir at the Cambridge college where MR James was (and at his recent funeral), and the crimes match those in MR James' stories. Penrose returns to Cambridge for the first time in a decade.
Archie was a med student in Cambridge until the war interrupted his studies. He was badly wounded. He knew Bridget there, an artist.
Josephine and Marta (who once was a mother in Cambridge) are friends of Archie. They're moving to Cambridge from London.They're close. Josephine has written novels and plays - Hitchcock (now moving to the States) has filmed one of them. They learn that Bridget has a 20 year old daughter and Archie is the father. Archie doesn't know and the daughter (currently in Cambridge) thinks her father died in the war. Josephine thinks that Archie should be told. Bridget thinks that it would be a bad idea.
A serial rapist is operating in Cambridge, getting into single women's houses. Archie has employed Josephine to help with investigations at the Cambridge end. Webster is the local detective on the case.
There's a showdown at Aldeburgh's Martello tower. Webster the murderer is there, holding Moorcroft at gunpoint. When Webster was 10 he witnessed the choir members gang-rape a girl. Moorcroft then killed her. Webster kills himself. Penrose accepts that Moorcroft can only be sentenced (hanged?) if another member of the gang gives a statement in return for a reduced (minimal, because of his contacts) sentence.
Bridget is killed. Archie is called to the scene. The daughter is there. Archie's upset that Bridget didn't say she was a mother. He's angry that Josephine already knew. He's even more angry when he learns that he's the father. Their bond of trust has been broken. Josephine manages to work out who the rapist is. She hopes this will mend their friendship.
Male/female roles is a sub-theme. Most of the students are male, and not all the police investigating the rapes are sensitive.
The plot's neat. There are 2 serial criminals (a rapist, and a murderer insensed by a rape), and 2 murder-story writers (the late MR James, and Josephine Tey). Webster is both the murderer and the seeker of the rapist.
I didn't realise until I'd finished that this was part of a series - the 7th of the Josephine Tey mystery books. After the novel ends, there's an interview with the author. Josephine Tey was a real author, though many of the novel's details are made up. There was a real Cambridge rapist - though decades after the novel's setting.
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