★★★★☆ Crimes of Passion

Death in the Spires

K.J. Charles

K.J. Charles's Death in the Spires begins in 1905, when our hero Jeremy (Jem) Kite is called into his boss's office. His boss has just received an anonymous letter accusing Jeremey of murder. Jem immediately knows what this is about, because it's something he's been living with for ten years. The REAL beginning of our story is in 1892, when Jem shows up at Oxford as a new student. He is quickly taken up into a group of seven friends, revolving about Toby Feynsham. So brilliant are these seven, both in sports and scholarship, that they become known among their contemporaries as the "seven wonders". Until 1895, when Toby was murdered. The other six know that the murderer had to be one of themselves. But the murder has not been solved.

Jem, prodded by the letter, is no longer able to let sleeping dogs lie, and begins to investigate. So it's a murder mystery with some of the usual elements common to most murder mysteries.

Two things about Death in the Spires stand out as different from genre murder mysteries. First, the usual mystery novel is passionless. The investigation is framed as an intellectual exercise, a game that the author plays with the reader. Indeed, Jem's boss alludes to this in his conversation with Jem. And, even more strangely, the murderers in genre mysteries are coldly rational actors, who plan their murders, and carefully think about the costs and benefits.

That is not the seven wonders at all. They are not coldly rational sociopaths. These are passionate, angry people (who, indeed, have much to be angry about). Death in the Spires is more emotionally powerful, and more believable as an account of murder, than most mystery novels.

The second thing that jumped out to me was, "This could not happen today." Charles has described Death in the Spires with these words

It's also whatever the opposite of a love letter to Oxford University might be. Possibly hate mail.

But the message is addressed to late 19th century Oxford, not the 21st century university that some of us know. At one point in the novel Jem and Hugo tell each other:

‘It hasn’t changed, has it?’
‘Not much. Nothing here does.’*

But it does. If your time horizon is ten years, the change is imperceptible. But the Oxford of Death in the Spires is not 2024 Oxford.

The Oxford in which Dorothy Hodgkin could not become a full-fledged Oxford Don because she was a woman is gone. That would not happen today. The England that convicted Alan Turing of "gross indecency" is gone. Gone too is the Oxford that would greet a brilliant new student with public mockery because he had, through his own merit, won a competitive scholarship.

Now, to be sure, the prejudices that motivated those injustices are still alive and flourishing in some quarters. But, at the very least, the legal environment has changed. And it has changed for the better!

Death in the Spires is not a typical genre mystery -- it is something better than that.

Thanks to NetGalley and Storm Publishing for an advance reader copy of Death in the Spires. Release date 11-Apr-2024.

*The quote is from an advance reader copy of Death in the Spires, and may change before publication. This review will be corrected on the release date if necessary.

Death in the Spires on Amazon

Goodreads review

Comments

★★★☆☆ There was never going to be an HEA

Warrior Diplomat: A Green Beret's Battles from Washington to Afghanistan Michael G. Waltz I picked up Michael G. Waltz 's Warrior Diplomat: A Green Beret's Battles from Washington to Afghanistan because President-Elect Donald Trump nominated him for National Security Advisor. I saw that he had written this book and read it to get an idea of who he is. First lesson: Waltz is not a buffoon like Matt Gaetz or Robert Kennedy, Jr. "Not a buffoon" is a low bar, but with this administration a nominee who clears it is welcome. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Waltz is an intelligent man with serious experience relevant to the post of National Security. If you are more than 30 years old, you have probably had this experience. You know a couple -- perhaps one of them is a friend of yours. Their relationship is always on the rocks. They fight, and the fights are serious. Because you're outside the relationship, you can see what neither of the principals

★★★★☆ Fictional autobiography of Rome's fourth Emperor

I, Claudius Robert Graves Robert Graves 's I, Claudius begins with these words I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus this-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles), who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as ‘Claudius the Idiot’, or ‘That Claudius’, or ‘Claudius the Stammerer’, or ‘Clau-Clau-Claudius’, or at best as ‘Poor Uncle Claudius’, am now about to write this strange history of my life... It is ostensibly an autobiography written by Claudius himself, covering the years of his life until he suddenly and unexpectedly became Emperor of Rome. (The sequel, Claudius the God continues the story into his reign.) Claudius is an intelligent and, given his environment and predecessors, surprisingly decent and humble man. Of course, the reader never forgets that we have only Claudius's own word for who and what he is. But his intelligence is beyond doubt -- a fool could not have written this. P

★★★☆☆ Peggy Carter sans Steve Rogers

Agent Carter Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely, Marvel Near the end of Captain America: The First Avenger Steve Rogers dives his airplane into the sea in order to prevent it from reaching (and destroying) New York City. In a final radio conversation with Agent Peggy Carter, he makes a date to take her dancing next Saturday. Both of them know he will not make that date. Agent Carter shows Peggy Carter's career after Steve's fall and after the end of the Second World War. The year is 1946, and she is an agent with the Strategic Scientific Reserve, a fictional secret organization that was the precursor to S.H.I.E.L.D. It is, I suspect, more or less based on the OSS , which was more or less the precursor to the CIA. Although she is one of SSR's most experienced and effective operatives, having had experience in the SOE (a real English spy operation in World War II) before coming to the American side, Peggy is relegated to fetching coffee and answering phones by her bosses

★★★☆☆ Succession in Djelibeybi and other stuff

Pyramids Terry Pratchett Yesterday I finished listening to Terry Pratchett 's Pyramids (book 7 in his Discworld series, and I find myself doing what I usually do when I finish a Discworld novel: scrambling frantically to locate the plot. It's not that Pyramids lacks a plot. My problem is Pratchett 's everything-up-to-and-including-the-kitchen-sink approach to story-telling. The plot of Pyramids is surrounded my yards and yards of stuff that seemed like a good idea at the time. And indeed, most of those things were good ideas. I'm influenced by my background. I have written many scientific papers. My approach to writing a paper is to identify one main conclusion that I want to convince the reader of, then require that every sentence marshall evidence for or against that conclusion. Fiction is different, but not SO different as all that. The corresponding idea in fiction is that every sentence should advance the plot. Now, of course this is not a universal rul

★★★☆☆ Minimal surreal magic school story

Midnight for Charlie Bone Jenny Nimmo Charlie Bone has one friend, who has a dog. Charlie lives with his mother and two grandmothers, one who is kind (Maisie) and one, Grandma Bone, who is severe. Charlie discovers unexpectedly that he has a gift -- he is "endowed", as Grandma Bone says. When he looks at a photograph, he can hear the conversation that took place when it was taken. Grandma Bone tells him that, because he is endowed, he must go to a special private school, Bloor's Academy. Charlie accordingly goes to Bloor's Academy, meets other endowed children, and has adventures. Although this sounds like Harry Potter or Percy Jackson , the feeling is completely different. Jenny Nimmo 's style is spare to the point of minimalism. Nothing is described in more than the barest outline. I don't have a mental image of any of the characters. The story is told in the third person from Charlie's point of view. His inner dialog is minimal. I don't have a f

★★★☆☆ Informative but annoyingly tendentious

Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues Jonathan Kennedy There is a book that everyone who is interested in biology and history should read: William H. McNeill 's Plagues and Peoples , published in 1976. I suppose that is long enough ago that we are allowed to call it a classic. Plagues and Peoples is an example of what I call a "I have a new hammer -- look at all these nails!" book. McNeill 's new hammer was consideration of the effects of infectious disease on history. He argued that infectious disease was an important force in history, persuasively in my opinion. Jonathan Kennedy 's Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues intends to update McNeill . Kennedy points out quite correctly that the advances in technology since 1976 enable us to see more deeply and clearly into the past of infectious disease than McNeill possibly could and thus to replace much of McNeill 's speculation with clearer and more solid answers. H

★★★★★ Cornelia Funke still gots it

Die Farbe der Rache Cornelia Funke I first listened to Cornelia Funke 's Inkworld trilogy (as it then was) beginning in 2004, and then as the audiobooks became available. They were among the very first audiobooks I ever listened to, and they were VERY good. The premise of the series is that some especially good narrators can, by reading a book aloud, read characters from the fictional world of the book into our own, and likewise read people from our world into the fictional world of the book. Versions of this idea are fairly common in fantasy fiction, and it's not hard to see why. If you are an avid reader, you feel that something like this happens when you read a good book: you enter into the book, and for a while you dwell in that fictional world. Aside from our own, the world in which most of the action of the Inkworld trilogy takes place is one created by a writer named Fenoglio in a fantasy novel called Inkheart . Although the series begins in our world, the principa

★★★★☆ Worst possible time to become a physician

Eleanore of Avignon Elizabeth DeLozier Elizabeth DeLozier 's Eleanore of Avignon is a story of the Black Death in Avignon, Provence, France. Even aside from the plague, there was a lot going on in Provence in 1348. It was that strange period in the history of the Roman Catholic Church when it was not literally Roman -- the popes lived in Avignon , not to be confused with the later even stranger period when there were simultaneously two guys claiming to be the pope. Clement VI was pope. His physician Guy de Chauliac (Guigo) would later became famous for an influential book on surgery, Chirurgia Magna . To make life even more exciting, the pregnant Queen Johanna of Naples arrived in Avignon while the plague was raging to be tried for the murder of one of her husbands. All of this really happened. In 1347 our hero, Eleanore Blanchet (an entirely fictional character), an herbalist and midwife living with her twin sister and father, runs into Guigo and manages to persuade

★★★★☆ If Virginia Hall was fictional, she would not be believable

A Woman of No Importance Sonia Purnell Fiction writers operate under certain constraints. Their characters and plots have to be believable. Pile the implausible too high, and critics and readers will complain. ( Mea culpa .) Reality is not thus constrained. Thus, Virginia Hall, an American spy, a tall striking redhead who speaks French with an American accent, and has a wooden leg that she calls Cuthbert, who organizes Resistance forces in occupied France during the Second World War, and who assembles and leads a force of about 1000 Maquis (rural guerillas) that defeat the Germans and drive them out of Le Puy before the Allied invasion reaches it. (Cuthbert seems so gratuitous. I would shout to the heavens about a fictional spy with a wooden leg. But Virginia was real, and she really had a wooden leg, and she really called it Cuthbert.) And this is only one of Hall's exploits. Before that she was the Limping Lady of Lyon and the Abwehr and Gestapo were obsessed with her, but never

★★★★☆ A broken mindship and lost children

In the Shadow of the Ship Aliette de Bodard Aliette de Bodard 's In the Shadow of the Ship is a novella set in her Xuya Universe . Like many Xuya stories, this one takes place aboard a mindship. This particular mindship is called Nightjar and was damaged escaping from the collapsing Empire. (Exactly which Empire this was I am not sure -- there is more than one in the Xuya Universe .) At any rate, Nightjar is not a healthy place. She escaped carrying some of her family. They still live aboard and afford her the loyalty she expects, mostly. Nightjar demands tribute in the form of children whom she lures into her dead zones, from which they never emerge. When Khuyên was a child she was invited to the dead zones by her cousin Anh, but she refused. Later she did the unthinkable: she left Nightjar for the broken Empire, where she rose to the post of Magistrate. Now Khuyên has returned to Nightjar for her grandmother's funeral, where she is met with a complex mixture of disdain

Search This Blog