Professor Brian Stanford Publishes “Somerville.”

It is said that there is a novel in each of us.  In the case of Brian Stanford, Professor Emeritus of Art History and Studio Art, there have been many over the years.  Now, one of them is seeing the light of day with the recent publication of "Somerville."  Professor Stanford provided the following synopsis of his murder mystery, noting that “the book itself is quite intricate and difficult to reduce to a simple description.”  

In January, 1996, the body of a Cambridge professor was found floating in the river Cam. An autopsy showed a large amount of alcohol in his system. At an inquest a verdict of accidental death was brought in. Some of his colleagues knew that it was no accident but could not prove it. There had been other deaths. They began to speed-up their researches from the early wartime years to the present. They discovered that the owner of a large Swiss pharmaceutical company had - at the beginning of the war - exchanged drugs for paintings stolen by the Nazis. Immediately after the war various groups were formed to trace such stolen property. There began a chain of deaths that did not end with the murder of the Cambridge professor.