Alfred Norbury is a learned man. He is never afraid to display his erudition, but he is generous in his encouragement of younger people. The people who assemble around him to form a reading club are also learned. Some of them are simply well-read, whilst others have formal qualifications which rival those of Norbury. But learning is no protection against violence. Murder arrives suddenly, brutally and unexpectedly. The investigation led by Detective Chief Inspector Percy Peach and Detective Sergeant Northcott reveals several people with good reason to hate the victim. They range from the young man who was his latest protégé to the two women forty years older whose lives were radically damaged by him a decade earlier. Peach tackles the case, and the people involved in it, with his normal ebullience. The solution when he arrives at it is both unexpected and moving.