Parting Breath

In this thrilling crime novel by CWA Diamond Dagger winner Catherine Aird, a student's last words are all that Detective C. D. Sloan has to go on in his latest case There are rumblings throughout the campus of the University of Calleshire, talk of a sit-in, of revolt, of H? Chí Minh, of discontent. Malcolm Humbert has been expelled, and the students are livid. Meanwhile, the faculty is equally out of sorts-Hilda Linaker just wants to finish her treatise on Jane Austen, Bernard Watkinson is tired of dealing with the female students' vehement-and possibly dangerous-opinions, and Simon Mautby can't find a lab tech to help with his ecology experiments. When someone breaks into a dorm room, leaving behind little evidence but a single kernel of corn, it's time to call in the police.   But no one-not the professors, the students, or even the great detective C. D. Sloan-could have predicted murder. A young woman finds a second-year student slumped against a cloister's column, covered in blood. Before he dies, he manages to breathe the words "twenty-six minutes."   The brilliant and acerbic inspector C. D. Sloan, recently reunited with his assistant, Detective Constable Crosby, must connect a seemingly unrelated burglary to a senseless murder-with nothing more to go on than those eerie last words.