These days, retired professor Donald Aitcheson spends his time doing whatever he pleases driving through the English countryside, exploring small villages and dipping into whatever used bookstores he can find. On one such outing, he chances upon a collection of Robert Browning’s poetry with an inscription that uses lines from ’Porphyria’s Lover’ to threaten the book’s original recipient. Perhaps this note was only a joke made in poor taste; still, something about its tone captivates Aitcheson’s otherwise unoccupied mind, and leads him to a remote boarding school to investigate. But when what starts as a harmless game of detective comes too close to a deadly truth, Aitcheson finds himself face-to-face with a killer, and learns that some pages are best left unturned…