The Poison Tree [Paperback]

The handsome student who lived at 57 West Street died there too, his brutal murderer never brought to justice.  For Terry Williams, returning to Oxford University to complete a doctorate in detective fiction, the house's macabre history simply means it's cheap.  She never suspected the twisted passsions that led to the student's death would entwine around her own life.

A stray cat traumatized by some past act of cruelty, a hidden cache of pornography, a close neighbor's illicit love affair .  .  .  soon Terry is drawn into a mystery more chilling than any in her fictional studies.  And back in the classroom she is uncovering a secret, erotic side to academia, where moral rules are suspended and where a tragic obsession may prove deadly for the innocent .  .  .  or for a woman seeing too clearly into a killer's dark and merciless heart.In the shadowy corridors of a prestigious university, a beautiful woman is entering the darkest place of all: the twisted mind of a killer....

"Strong works out his whodunit plot with care and shows no mercy in exposing the loose morals of Oxford's hedonistic literary crowd."
--The New York Times Book Review

"The classic English mystery meets the modern American thriller...and the result is bloody screaming murder."
--Matthew Hall, author ofThe Art of Breaking GlassTony Strong lives in England.  The Poison Treeis his first novel.Terry paused on the landing outside her tutor's rooms, partly because they were on the top floor and she needed to get her breath back, and partly because she wanted to listen to the Bach coming from the other side of the door. As an undergraduate she'd once teased Reg that to have a harpsichord in your rooms verged on the pretentious; he'd looked mildly surprised and said, as if it were perfectly obvious, "But I couldn't have got a piano uplS(