I read Nemesis by Rory Clements in June, having really enjoyed the earlier books in the Professor Tom Wilde series – Corpus and Nucleus. This one did not disappoint.

It picks up our protagonist in southern France in August 1939, just before the outbreak of war, where he and Lydia are enjoying their honeymoon, despite not having actually got married, whilst Lydia is dealing with morning sickness (although Tom is still in the dark about that). A mysterious visitor arrives with a message that one of Tom’s old students is in an internment camp not far away, having been fighting in the Spanish Civil War. Tom gets him out and then back to Britain, but something funny is going on with this former student, Marcus Marfield, a choral scholar with the voice of an angel.

Tom’s friend Jim Vanderburg and his family then get caught up in the sinking of the Athenia off the coast of Northern Ireland, packed with Americans returning to the safety of home. His old friend in College in Cambridge, Horace Dill, is still hanging onto life by a thread, and one of Wilde’s friends, Russian Elina Kossoff, seems to be mixed-up in something underhand.

There’s lots of tearing about on his motorcycle as usual, as Britain gets used to war and Tom tries to escape being killed and to prevent any more murders from taking place.