The Cambridge Caper

About the Book

What do Chopin, law school parties, and drugs have in common?

When Charlie Witherspoon, a Chicago lawyer, returns to Harvard for his tenth Law School reunion, he doesn't expect anything more than boozy parties with nephew Tom Endicott and former classmate Sidney Rosenblatt. Instead, he encounters an exam-cheating scheme, a dead lawyer, and odd transactions at local bookstores that are tied to drug dealing on a massive scale.

After a mysterious guest dies during a party at Tom Endicott's apartment, Tom finds himself embroiled in a police inquiry about the dead man's tutoring business and cheating on a true-false test given by Professor Rosenblatt. Meanwhile, John Rogers, a law school buddy of Tom's who moonlights as a classical music disc jockey, is beaten up for playing the wrong piano piece on his radio show. At the request of Tom and the Dean of Harvard Law School, Uncle Charlie postpones his return to Chicago. Charlie uses his knowledge of music and the law to help the police unravel a complicated drug distribution system involving four banks, a liquor store, and a Puerto Rican connection.

About the Author

Thomas W. Underhill, a graduate of Harvard Law School in 1949, practiced patent law in Chicago, Boston, and St. Louis before retiring to Cape Cod in the 1970s. During his retirement, he wrote two legal thrillers and numerous crossword puzzles, some of which were published in the New York Times magazine. The Cambridge Caper is his first published novel.