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Norman Russell
Robert Hale
31 May 2015/ ISBN 9780719816086
Mystery/Historical
Reviewed
by Rachel A Hyde
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Sir Montague Fowler,
the warden of St Michael’s College in Oxford is on his
deathbed. It looks as though he has died from food poisoning,
or was it just poisoning of the less accidental sort? Soon rumors
are rife about how he met his death and there are plenty of
people who are not sorry to see him gone. His three children
are all in need of money and have secrets to hide, and in the
back-stabbing world of the colleges many wanted his job or at
least somebody else in it that would be more amenable to their
ideas. Cue DI Antrobus and female doctor Sophia Jex-Blake to
investigate.
This is possibly the first in a brand new series for Mr. Russell;
I hope so anyway. In his other two series he has written about
secret agents, rural detectives and his own variant on the gothic
novel. Now he turns his attention to the groves of Academe and
has as one of his sleuths a real life pioneer physician. Oxford
and its colleges come to life, a realistic picture of a hothouse
atmosphere of privilege and jockeying for power, a place with
its own rules and standards. I certainly didn’t guess
it all and Mr. Russell deftly delivers a taut, page turner of
a book with plenty of twists and turns and no parts in need
of an editor. As with some of his other books at one point there
is a frisson of the supernatural but it does not get in the
way of the investigations. This is not a gothic tale but a detective
one and should appeal to all fans of historical mysteries. I
hope this is the first in a new series for this talented author.
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