Swing, Swing Together

An elementary school teacher in training takes a midnight swim in the Thames and witnesses a body being dumped. Cribb and Thackerey investigate and uncover strange parallels with the then-popular Jerome K. Jerome mystery Three Men in a Boat . After Jerome K Jeromes Three Men in a Boat became a Victorian bestseller, rowing on the Thames was the great craze of 1889. The novel begins, however, with skinny-dipping (under another name) by some student teachers. By chance one of them finds herself a witness in a case of murder. The suspects? Three men in a boat. When Cribb and Thackeray take to the river in pursuit, nobody will take them seriously. However, they stick doggedly to the trail, which leads upstream to Oxford. Harriet Shaw, pupil at a proper English boarding school, is persuaded to participate in a midnight skinny-dipping party by two less than proper schoolmates. Alas for Harriet, she finds herself not only separated from her clothes and facing possible expulsion, but also the inadvertent key witness to a murder. One of the late-Victorian murder mysteries investigated by Sgt Cribb. In a case which links Jerome K. Jerome with Jack the Ripper, Harriet Shaw takes a midnight dip in the Thames, near Henley, and witnesses a killing. She and Cribb follow a trail upriver to Oxford, where a second drowning occurs When Harriet Shaw takes a midnight swim, she is a vital witness to a murder - only she can identify the three men in a boat, plus dog, whose journey ended in death. And only Sergeant Cribb can navigate the sinister undercurrents