Suffolk, 1970. Albert Campion is back in Black Dudley, once the scene of murder and mayhem but now home to the brand-new University of Suffolk Coastal. Appointed to the role of the university's Visitor, Campion finds he has a curiously vague remit, but his initial visit to the concrete campus takes an unexpected turn when the body of charismatic Chilean professor Pascual Perez-Catalan, a rising star and genius scientist in the field of geochemistry, is fished out of the ornamental lake.

It seems Pascual was unpopular among his fellow academics and lecturers, his trail-blazing research taking up most of the university's new computing capacity . . . and he was also a keen ladies man. Drawn into another puzzling murder, Campion must negotiate internal politics, seething jealousy and resentment, blackmail, betrayal and a phantom trumpeter as he searches for a ruthless killer.