Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0749006927, Hardcover)

Cambridge, 1888. Miss Vanessa Duncan is a young schoolmistress recently appointed to teach at Cambridge University. Since she misses her home in the country and her twin sister, Dora, dreadfully, she writes Dora regularly about her feelings and experiences. Her lodgings are small but comfortable and she finds teaching her classes of young girls stimulating and the world of academia is fascinating to her—although as a woman she is denied the opportunity to experience it to the full.

In mid-February, the peaceful university atmosphere is shattered when a Fellow of mathematics, Mr. Akers, is found dead in his rooms from a violent blow to the back of the head. Invited to dinner by the family of one of her charges, Vanessa discovers that her companions include many colleagues of the unfortunate victim, including Mr. Arthur Weatherburn who had dined with Akers on the evening of his death and is, by coincidence, Vanessa's upstairs neighbor. While discussing the murder, she learns of a competition set by the King of Sweden and the `n-body problem', an as yet unsolved puzzle that Isaac Newton first posed. It is thought that perhaps Akers had been working towards a solution to win the prestigious prize.

As the months pass, and the murder remains unsolved, Vanessa's relationship with Arthur Weatherburn begins to blossom. Then another mathematician, Mr. Beddoes, is murdered in the same fashion and Arthur is thrown into jail. Vanessa, convinced of his innocence, sets about trying to prove her case. When a third mathematician dies, and the evidence starts to stack up, it is a race against time to unravel the threads and prove her theory correct.

An engaging, atmospheric and stimulating novel, 'The Three-Body Problem' is a cleverly written debut from an exciting new talent.