Inspector Khan of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary investigates the murder of a serpent-tongued Cambridge professor whilst fending off the romantic overtures of an interfering local reporter. An escalating cat-and-mouse game develops between the police and a murderer who cannot control his impulses. It leads to a dramatic and humourous denouement in Berlin. This is a classic English murder mystery with the twist that the chief detective is a first-generation, well-educated, South Asian Muslim, who effectively exploits the often stereotypic response of others to him to benefit his policing.

Richard Ned Lebow is Professor Emeritus of International Political Theory and King's College London, Presidential Professor Emeritus at Dartmouth College, and Honorary Fellow of Pembroke College of the University of Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and recipient of numerous honorary degrees and book awards. He has authored some fifty books in the fields of international relations, comparative politics, political theory, political psychology, history, classics, and philosophy of science. He now also writes fiction. Rough Waters, his first book of short stories, is about personal and political ethical dilemmas. Obsession is the first of a series of Inspector Khan crime novels. Ned is an avid runner, tennis player, hiker, gardener, and lover of chamber music and opera. He and his wife Carol live in Cortona, Tuscany and Etna, New Hampshire.