Academia (n.): a profession filled with bad food, knee-jerk liberalism, and murder...Being a member of the House of Lords and Mistress of St Martha's College in Cambridge might seem enough to keep anyone busy, but Baroness (Jack) Troutbeck likes new challenges. When a combination of weddings, work, and spookery deprives her of five of her closest allies, she leaps at an invitation to become a Distinguished Visiting Professor on an American campus. With her head full of romantic fantasies inspired by 1950s Hollywood, and accompanied by Horace, her loquacious and disconcerting parrot, this intellectually-rigorous right-winger sets off from England blissfully unaware that academia in the United States is dominated by knee-jerk liberalism, contempt for Western civilization, and the institutionalisation of a form of insane political-correctness. Will the bon viveuse Baroness Troutbeck be able to cope with the culinary and vinous desert that is New Paddington, Indiana? Can this insensitive and tactless human battering-ram defeat the thought-police who run Freeman State University like a gulag? Does she believe the late Provost was murdered? If so, what should she do about it? And will she manage to persuade Robert Amiss--who describes himself bitterly as Watson to her Holmes and Goodwin to her Nero Wolfe--to abandon his honeymoon and fly to her side?

The British fondness for tradition is no secret, but some members of London's ffeatherstonehaugh's club (pronounced "Fanshaw," naturally) seem to be taking things a bit too far, bumping off officers of the club who threaten their ordered, if highly eccentric, way of life. After the club secretary allegedly jumps to his death from the club's gallery, Robert Amiss, conveniently unemployed at the moment, agrees to help his friends at the Police Department get to the bottom of things. Hiring on as a club waiter, Amiss finds himself caught up in a bizarre caricature of a club, run by and for debauched geriatrics, with skeletons rattling in every closet. The portraits are of roues, the library houses erotic literature, and the servants are treated like Victorian lackeys - on a good day. Why are there so few members? How are they financed? Will Amiss keep his job - and his cover - despite the enmity of the ferocious, snuff-covered Colonel Flagg? The answers lie in this ingenious, uproarious mystery that will keep you guessing - and laughing - until the very end.