Conventions of college professors frequently produce scholarship and conviviality, occasionally bad temper and quarrels, but they seldom result in murder. The members of the English department of Wilton, a small New England university, are having a quiet drink together in the convention hotel when one of them drops dead. Gradually, a group of men who have known each other for years realize that among them is a killer. When classes resume in an atmosphere of mutual suspicion, it becomes clear that the clue to the murder lies in the professional relationships among the people in the department. The teaching duties of the murdered man are taken over by a breezy and delightfully wacky old Englishwoman. She is a distinguished medievalist who fancies herself an amateur detective and insists on trying to help the police, to the discomfiture of the young detective in charge of the case. Layer after layer of hidden motives is revealed until it is apparent that each member of the department had good reason to commit the murder. Scholarly serenity and academic in-fighting give way to horror at the imminent danger of the killer's striking again. Only the Englishwoman retains her aplomb, alternating her teaching with dog-training, too much bourbon, and unfazed confidence in her far-fetched attempts at detection. Deadly Meeting, a fast-moving, urbane thriller, is a unique combination of terror and humor set against the tranquility and erudition of academe.

Robert Bernard is the pseudonym of Robert B. Martin, Professor of English at Princeton University and author of scholarly works on Victorian literature. Under his pseudonym he has written another mystery, Death Takes a Sabbatical.