The unique characters of the late Oxford crime author Dorothy L. Sayers — Lord Peter Wimsey and his wife Harriet Vane — are resurrected for Jill Paton Walsh’s latest novel, The Late Scholar (Hodder & Stoughton, £19.99, ebook £7.47)

Having been made a Duke, Peter discovers he has also now become the Visitor of St Severin’s College, Oxford.

When a vote can’t be decided on between Fellows — in this instance, over the potential sale of a valuable manuscript, possibly owned at one stage by King Alfred — the Visitor is called upon to help settle the dispute.

With half of the fellows in favour of keeping the manuscript, and half wanting to sell it for land they can sell on to solve their financial problems, they seem to have reached a deadlock.

That is, until the college Fellows start having mysterious accidents and even dying, in circumstances curiously similar to those featured in Sayers’s crime novels.

This is a charming romp through Oxford, featuring some unforgettable characters — a novel to get lost in on a dark winter’s evening.

Emma Herdman