I’ve been on a bit of a Cambridge streak in my reading lately, so here we are again. Stott’s debut novel opens like a mystery: Cambridge historian Elizabeth Vogelsang, whose potentially controversial book on Isaac Newton’s use of alchemy is nearly finished, is found drowned in a river at the end of her garden, clutching a prism. Lydia Brooke, one of her former students, is urged by Elizabeth’s son Cameron to finish the book.

One difficulty is that she has her own work to do. Another is that C...