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 multi-story carpark, right in front of his prying camera. Sarah turns out to have a history of mental illness, so to DI Susan Holden it looks like a straightforward case of suicide, but when Jake Arnold, the last person Sarah called, turns up dead in the River Isis, Holden’s preconceptions are thrown into disorder. Now she and her collegues are plunged into a race against time. Firmly set in the side-streets of Oxford, from Cowley Road to the Kassam football stadium, from riverside pubs to a mental health day-center, Blood on the Cowley Road builds to a startling climax.