JILL PATON WALSH – The Wyndham Case. Imogen Quy #1. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1993; trade paperback, 2003. St. Martin’s, US, hardcover, 1993.

   Jill Paton Walsh, who died in 2020, was first best known as the author of a long list of children’s book. She rose to fame in “our” field for being chosen to complete one of Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey novels, left unfinished at the time of her death (Thrones, Dominations, 1998), followed by three more Wimsey novels written on her own.

   Alongside these she wrote the four books in her Imogen Quy series, of which this is the first. Imogen is a young nurse at St. Agatha’s College, Cambridge University —  an interesting way to write detective mysteries involving college professors and deans in action, up close and personal, but yet from the outside, without having a major stake in the game.

   The “Wyndham Case” is actually (as a play on words) the spectacular shelving unit in a special, separately endowed scholarly library at St. Agatha’s, complete with arcane requirements for its care and financial upkeep . Found dead there one morning is a student who, because of his meager means, is suspected by many of being there for nefarious reasons. Thievery,

   A close male friend of Imogen is a police officer, which is always a good way to get a layperson involved in a murder case. Imogen is, in fact, invited by him to do just that when the students in the dead boy’s life stonewall the police.

   Walsh has to have been a good choice to continue to Peter Wimsey series. Her prose is clear, precise, witty, and just fusty enough to qualify. (I haven’t read any of them.) Imogen Quy (rhymes with “why”) is quiet but both perky and intelligent enough to be able spend a lot of enjoyable time with – perhaps too much so, as the fully absorbed reader (me) can easily find him- or herself so caught up in her personal life as to let the clues in the case slip  on by Me again).

   Do not lose yourself in the game, therefore,  and miss sight of the goal. Read and remember all the details as the case goes on. They will all be there (mostly).

   I enjoyed this one.
   

       The Imogen Quy series —

The Wyndham Case (1993)
A Piece of Justice (1995)
Debts of Dishonour (2006)
The Bad Quarto (2007)