Rebecca Stott: English professor pens novel about history and Newton
In 1667, a young Isaac Newton was awarded a fellowship at Trinity College in Cambridge. Was it luck, influence, brains or murder that won him his coveted position?
Historians know little about the reclusive Newton, and British history professor and debut novelist Rebecca Stott uses his enigmatic life to construct a modern-day murder mystery set against the backdrop of a 17th-century ghost story.
When Elizabeth Vogelsang, a contemporary Cambridge historian, is found drowned, her son Cameron asks his ex-lover, writer Lydia Brooke, to complete his mother's book about Newton.
But strange things begin to happen when Lydia moves into Elizabeth's house.
Files begin to disappear, blood stains appear on a pillow case, and Lydia is attacked and beaten.
Then there's the spectral vision of a man — is it Newton? — whose presence casts itself upon a mirror or into the middle of a crowd of people on a Cambridge bridge.
Is there a connection between murders that happened in 17th-century Cambridge and the death of Elizabeth and a scientist with whom Cameron works? Did Newton kill all of them?...
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Historians know little about the reclusive Newton, and British history professor and debut novelist Rebecca Stott uses his enigmatic life to construct a modern-day murder mystery set against the backdrop of a 17th-century ghost story.
When Elizabeth Vogelsang, a contemporary Cambridge historian, is found drowned, her son Cameron asks his ex-lover, writer Lydia Brooke, to complete his mother's book about Newton.
But strange things begin to happen when Lydia moves into Elizabeth's house.
Files begin to disappear, blood stains appear on a pillow case, and Lydia is attacked and beaten.
Then there's the spectral vision of a man — is it Newton? — whose presence casts itself upon a mirror or into the middle of a crowd of people on a Cambridge bridge.
Is there a connection between murders that happened in 17th-century Cambridge and the death of Elizabeth and a scientist with whom Cameron works? Did Newton kill all of them?...