Introduction

The sudden death of a pupil in Fleat House at St Stephen’s - a small English private boarding school in deepest Norfolk - is a shocking event that the headmaster is very keen to call a tragic accident.

But the local police cannot rule out foul play and the case prompts the return of high-flying Detective Inspector Jazmine ‘Jazz’ Hunter to the force. Jazz has her own private reasons for stepping away from her police career in London but reluctantly agrees to front the investigation as a favour to her old boss.

Reunited with her loyal Sergeant, Alastair Miles, she enters the closed world of the school, and as Jazz begins to probe the circumstances surrounding Charlie Cavendish’s tragic death, events are soon to take another troubling turn.

Charlie is exposed as an arrogant bully and those around him had both motive and opportunity to switch the drugs he took daily to control his epilepsy.

As staff at the school close ranks, the disappearance of young pupil Rory Millar and the death of an elderly Classics Master provide Jazz with important leads but are destined to complicate the investigation further. As snow covers the landscape and another suspect goes missing, Jazz must also confront her own personal demons…

Then a particularly grim discovery at the school makes this the most challenging murder investigation of her career. Because Fleat House hides secrets darker than even Jazz could ever have imagined…

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Excerpt

Prologue
St Stephen’s School, Norfolk January 2005
As the figure took the stairs leading to the sixth-form cor- ridor – a maze of shoebox-sized studies, one per boy – the only sounds were the clanking and stirring coming from the antiquated radiators, inefficient cast-iron sentinels that had struggled to warm Fleat House and the boys within it for the past fifty years. ... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

How did the author use the atmosphere of the book to contribute to the story?

This is Lucinda Riley’s only classic mystery – did you feel influences of other grert British mystery writer’s?

What did you think of Jazz’s reasons for stepping away from police work and then agreeing to get invovled in this case?

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