Susie Dent

A brand-new linguistic mystery from Countdown's resident lexicographer, Susie Dent, set in the city of Oxford.A mysterious letter.

A silenced scholar.

A city paved with injustice.When mysterious symbols appear as graffiti around Oxford, lexicographer Martha Thornhill recognises them from an alphabet created by a deceased writer whose papers she once worked on.

But this is no publicity stunt, and tensions intensify when further graffiti is found near the body of a university lecturer.Martha is not the only one to have doubts when the suspicious death is assumed by police to be a suicide.

Called upon to lend their linguistic expertise to the case, she and her colleagues begin to unearth a tragedy that extends beyond the ancient walls of the university.

As new messages portend more death, it's clear that a spirit of vengeance is stalking the city's streets, and may be reaching out towards them too.Susie Dent is a writer and broadcaster on language.

She recently celebrated thirty years as a co-presenter and resident word expert on Channel 4's Countdown, and also appears on the show's comedy sister 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown.

Susie comments regularly on TV and radio on words in the news, and is the author of several non-fiction books on words and language.

Her debut novel, Guilty by Definition, was an instant Sunday Times bestseller and was shortlisted for Book of the Year - Crime/Thriller at the British Book Awards 2025.