


Each relationship the girl left behind casts new light both on Elena and on those people who appeared to know her best-from an unsavory Swedish-born Shakespearean professor to the brooding head of the Deaf Students Union. Thus, Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and his partner, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, enter the rarefied world of Cambridge University, where academic gowns often hide murderous intentions.įor both officers, the true identity of Elena Weaver proves elusive. Unwilling to turn the killing over to the local police, the university calls in New Scotland Yard. As for Elena, she lived a life of casual and intense physical and emotional relationships, with scores to settle and goals to achieve-until someone, lying in wait along the route she ran every morning, bludgeoned her to death.

Stephen's College-her father and his second wife each had their own very different image of the girl. While her embittered mother fretted about her welfare from her home in London, in Cambridge-where Elena was a student at St. In her clingy dresses and dangling earrings she exuded a sexuality at odds with the innocence projected by the unicorn posters on her walls. Elena Weaver was a surprise to anyone meeting her for the first time.
