Fourth in the Professor Peter Shandy mystery series

Professor Peter Shandy has some times been called the Hercule Poirot of the turnip fields. With due and ungrudging respect to the eminent Belgian egghead, it may be pointed out that Peter Shandy has by now carved a niche of his own in the Nightmare Abbey of crime detection. His previous adventures: Rest You Merry, The Luck Runs Out, and Wrack and Rune, have won him acclaim from readers here and abroad.

Had she but known her cat Edmund was hanging out with Chief Fred Ottermole at the Balaclava Junction Police Station, Mrs. Martha Lomax might not have been so dumbfounded when Edmund pulled off a brilliant piece of detection. Acting on Edmund's clue, she discovered the remains of her aged, unpleasant, but usually predictable boarder Professor Herbert Ungley impaled on a harrow peg behind the clubhouse of the exclusive Balaclavian Society. Fred Ottermole called his death an accident, but Mrs. Lomax didn't, for she and Edmund had found another clue. This one led them straight to Balaclava Agricultural College, whence Professor Ungley had been emeritized by President Thorkjeld Svenson under circumstances even Martha Lomax didn't know about.
Before another night had passed, the college was fighting for survival and all Balaclava County was involved in a power struggle that could only be resolved by a titanic clash between town and gown.