Hugh returns to Oxford intending to pursue a very personal objective: winning the hand of Kate. Instead he is drawn into trouble when the books of Master John Wycliffe are stolen. Recovering valuable manuscripts is urgent enough, but the matter becomes darker when a poor scholar connected with the theft is found dead in the river. Hugh and Kate follow a trail through colleges, booksellers, scholars and the streets of medieval Oxford, where learning can be as fiercely contested as land or money.
The mystery uses the University of Oxford as more than a backdrop. Manuscript books were expensive objects produced by hand, and access to them carried intellectual and financial value. John Wycliffe appears before the most controversial phase of his reforming career, already established within Oxford’s scholarly world. Hugh’s investigation therefore connects a private crime to the institutions that trained clerics, theologians and administrators for Edward III’s England, while his courtship of Kate advances the personal story that continues through the series.
