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The Cambridge Theorem
Tony Cape
#UB4282
Paperback, 424 pages; 2005 (1989)
$10.95
A Mysterious Small Press…
In 1994, Maggie Topkis and four friends opened Partners & Crime—a mystery bookstore in New York's Greenwich Village—because they loved introducing customers to little-known gems in the genre. But increasingly, those gems were disappearing as publishers took titles out of print. So, Topkis decided to save her favorite mysteries from extinction and in 1995 she launched Felony & Mayhem Press. How does she choose what to publish? "We always start with the writing," she says. "Is it intelligent? Is it witty? Is it the voice of an author with whom you want to spend time? Most newly published mysteries are plot-driven—the characters get moved through the story like pieces on a chessboard. I know there are readers who are looking for a richer experience than that. And at Felony & Mayhem, we hope to provide it."
Bas Bleu is proud to offer six Felony & Mayhem titles that Maggie Topkis has selected especially for our readers. Read her recommendations, below, and you'll want all six!
The setting is Cambridge University, where Simon Bowles, a graduate student with a history of depression, has apparently committed suicide. Called to the scene is the local cop—a bit of a misfit on the force, thanks to his passion for everything American, including cowboy boots, Willie Nelson, and JFK conspiracy theories. He's willing to sign off on Bowles's suicide, but in a cursory examination of the deceased's papers, he stumbles across some meticulously detailed notes of an investigation that Bowles apparently conducted into the "Cambridge Spies" of the 1930s—a real-life ring of students/Soviet spies who went on to hold important positions at the BBC, in British intelligence, and with the royal court, before ultimately defecting or being unmasked. Could Bowles possibly have identified the long-rumored "fifth member" of the Cambridge Spies? And could his investigation, and its concluding "theorem," have brought about his death? What's so terrific about this book is the extent to which the author's clearly exhaustive research is knit into an engaging plot—with a romance angle and an appealingly irritable protagonist.
(MT)
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