Riot Most Uncouth — Daniel Friedman

1807, Cambridge, England.

A young woman is murdered in a boarding house, and nobody knows what to do about it. The volunteer watchman who patrols the streets of this placid college town has no idea how to investigate a serious crime and the private bounty hunters the girl's family has hired to catch the killer employ methods that are questionable, at best.

What Cambridge needs is a hero, and, in a situation such as this, it's very easy for a gentleman with a romantic disposition to mistake himself for one.

19 year-old Lord Byron, the outlaw poet, is a student at Trinity College, though he can only be described as a "student" in the loosest sense of the word: He rarely attends class and, instead, spends his time day-drinking, making love to faculty wives, and feeding fine cuisine and expensive wine to the bear he keeps as a pet.

Catching a killer seems like a fine diversion, however, and Byron decides that solving the crime must take precedence over other, less-urgent matters such as his failing grades and mounting debts.

Written by the Edgar Award-nominated author of Don't Ever Get Old, which Publishers Weekly called "wickedly funny," and inspired by Byron's moody, sexy and often hilarious poems and letters, this dark, twisty mystery will keep you guessing until its violent conclusion.