It's a relief to encounter a new crime writer who doesn't rely on blood splatting and sweaty bodies to achieve her effects. That violence and sex exist we may take as read, but what the

jaded reader needs (particularly after a batch of American noir) is suspense. Why, how, who - and what is to be the outcome, are the elements of the traditional mystery, and this is one of them: a plausible tale of credible characters driven to murder in Academe.

The action takes place in a Cambridge college and the protagonist's isolated house in the Fens. Cassandra James is a lecturer in nineteenth century literature. A feisty woman emerging from an unpleasant divorce, she discovers the head of her department drowned in her own swimming pool among the scattered pages of exam papers. This not long after one of the dead woman's students has taken a fatal fall down a limestone cliff in Derbyshire. Cribbed exam papers, concealed computer disks, steamy love letters, deaths: in no time Cassandra is not only embroiled in a fiery lesbian affair but is entertaining suspicions concerning the deaths. One may be accident, a second dodgey, a third: murder. For there is a third and Cassandra: inquisitive, impulsive, concerned to save her threatened department, is set to be the fourth.

The writing is what one might expect from an authority on a century of educated writers, good enough indeed that it has no trouble rising above extremely careless printing, obviously not the fault of an author who knows her stuff. There are neat background touches. The Cat, of course - no female don is complete without a cat; the motherly secretary's 14-year-old daughter who demands a tongue stud for Christmas, even a student drawing inspiration for his thesis from Arthur Conan Doyle who appears to him in seances. But why not? Superstition isn't the prerogative of the uneducated.

This is a feminine book that will appeal to intelligent men. The climax is surely unique involving as it does premature childbirth in a fenland fog, and a murderer. Definitely different.