An art student on-the-make sets up a 'suicide' plaque, and within hours Sarah Johnson has plunged to her death from the top of the mult-storey car-park, right in front of his prying camera. Sarah turns out to have a history of mental ill-health, so to DI Susan Holden it looks like a straightforward case of suicide, but when Jake Arnold, the last person Sarah rang on her mobile, turns up dead in the River Isis, Holden's preconceptions are thrown into disorder. Now she and her colleagues are plunged into a race against time. Firmly set in the side-streets of Oxford, from Cowley Road to the Kassam footbal stadium, from riveside pubs to a mental health day-centre, Blood on the Cowley Road builds to a startling climax.