Manchester novelist - and lecturer - publishes fifth novel

The fifth novel by University of Manchester Professor of Contemporary Literature Patricia Duncker, has been published. The acclaimed work called The strange case of the composer and his judge, begins with the mass suicide of an affluent group of holiday makers in a snowbound chalet. The dead belonged to a secret cult who were bound together by an ancient book of the occult. Dominique Carpentier, an eccentric investigator who according to the Daily Mail should take her place as a female counterpart to Inspector Morse, braves the frozen landscape to investigate the deaths. Dominique sets out to discover the precise nature of the involvement of a composer, Friedrich Grosz, who is linked to the cult. But she finds herself falling under the spell of Grosz. The investigation also brings her to Jodrell Bank, where the iconic Lovell Telescope dominates the landscape.