Eric Wright’s Toronto-based sleuth Joe Barley, a college English instructor and private eye (both part-time), makes a welcome second appearance just in time for the summer reading season.

While Barley’s days are mostly occupied attempting to impart literature to the often unwilling undergraduates at Hambleton College, he spends his evenings trying to pin an adultery rap on Jason Tyler, a dealer in rare and second-hand books. Barley’s employer has been hired by Mrs. Tyler to prove that Jason is not getting all his loving at home, and Barley is assigned to provide the proof.

Finding the tryst location is easy enough, since Tyler has rented a couch-equipped street-front office for his assignations, but something seems wrong with this simple “piece on the side” scenario. The timing and actions of the meetings are out of synch, as is the client’s reaction to the proof of adultery. Barley’s instincts scream that something is wrong, and when he stumbles across his quarry’s connection to a missing Hemingway manuscript, his doubts are confirmed. While he tries to locate and restore the manuscript to its rightful owner and fulfill the wishes of the agency’s client, Barley becomes embroiled in academic politics and sundry minor mysteries, machinations, and malfeasances relating to his teaching duties and colleagues.

There’s a lot of English Department infighting here, perhaps too much, but to those with any post-secondary teaching experience the squabbles will ring unerringly true. Wright creates some memorable minor characters and evokes excellent streetscapes and scenes of Toronto as he unravels the answers to mysteries that are often glaringly predictable but, as always, well-told and a pleasure to read.