Lord David Cholmondeley is attending to his dairy cows at the family estate in the Cotswolds when he is recalled to service by MI5. Someone murdered his best friend, an Oxford don and an active undercover MI5 agent. The year is 1933 and the political climate at Oxford is volatile with Communist sympathizers on the political left and Nazi sympathizers on the right. David Cholmondeley is blessed with a penetrating intelligence and cursed with clumsiness. In his first month at Oxford as an undercover agent, he meets a Somerville College don and he is alarmed by her imposing presence. Her true identity eludes him, but when they stumble onto a scene of mayhem, he figures out who she is.
Combining elements of Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau with Dorothy Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey, John Milton is Dead is sure to please mystery fans.
Enid Keil Sichel is the author of The Physicist’s Cat, a humorous memoir. This is her first work of fiction. She is a physicist and a resident of South Hadley, MA.