Death Goes to School — Q. Patrick

The Edgar Award�"winning author of the Peter Duluth Mysteries (as Patrick Quentin) “keeps the reader guessing” in a mystery set at a British boys' school (The New York Times).
 
Patrick Quentin, best known for the Peter Duluth puzzle mysteries, also penned outstanding detective novels from the 1930s through the 1960s under other pseudonyms, including Q. Patrick and Jonathan Stagge. Anthony Boucher wrote: “Quentin is particularly noted for the enviable polish and grace which make him one of the leading American fabricants of the murderous comedy of manners; but this surface smoothness conceals intricate and meticulous plot construction as faultless as that of Agatha Christie.”
 
The lads at Craiglea, a preparatory school on the Bristol Channel, are unimpeachable young men. The faculty? Unflappable. Until a student is found smothered in a linen closet. The son of a controversial American judge, Eric Moss, along with his brother, had already been a victim of a botched kidnapping back in the States. Ironically, they'd been enrolled at Craiglea for their own safety. But if it was an inside job, who did it? The suspects number a staff of sixteen and sixty-eight boys. But one precocious student might know more than he's letting on . . .