Introducing Oxford-based private investigator Jennie Redhead in the first of a brand-new mystery series.

Oxford, 1974. Seventeen-year-old Linda Corbet is missing. She disappeared a few nights before when she was supposed to be visiting a schoolfriend. Linda's mother Mary doesn't think her daughter has run away as the police and her husband believe. She is convinced Linda was murdered - and she has hired private investigator Jennie Redhead to find out what really happened to her.

The only clue Jennie has to go on is a fragment of an obscure 17th century poem she finds in Linda's bedroom: Or will you, like a cold and errant coward/Abandon all and make a shivering turn. But from that one clue Jennie's investigations will lead her to a secret Oxford society - and a hidden world of violence, excess and desire which lies behind the city's dreaming spires.