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A Schooling in Murder
- Author
- Andrew Taylor
- Narrator
- Nathalie Buscombe
- Publisher
- HarperCollins Publishers
- Publish Date
- 5 June 2025
- Run Time
- 11 hours 13 minutes
- Format
- x-book®
- Genre
- Historical fiction, Crime and mystery: women sleuths / detectives, Crime and mystery: private investigator / amateur detectives, Psychological thriller, Classic fiction: literary and general, Classic horror, ghost stories and supernatural fiction
- Rating
- 4.8 (4 reviews)
What to expect
'Ten out of ten' The Times
‘A grand piece of work – a triumph and one of Taylor’s best’ MICK HERRON
'A wonderfully unique novel from the master of historical crime fiction. Beautiful, haunting, and quite brilliant' LAURA SHEPHERD-ROBINSON
‘As good as I’d expect from a master of the craft’ VAL MCDERMID
'A wonderful, subtle novel, set in a strange, enclosed world. Beautiful writing and a gloriously satisfying ending' ANN CLEEVES
__________
England, May 1945
In the last days of World War II, Monkshill Park School for Girls stands far apart from the violence in Europe. Yet a woman has been murdered in its grounds.
Annabel Warnock, a teacher with a secretive past, has disappeared. The teachers and girls whisper that she’s run away, but in fact she has met a violent end.
Replacement tutor and amateur crime writer Alec Shaw arrives to find a school riven with bitter rivalries and dangerous tensions. He begins to suspect there is a real-life mystery waiting to be solved… and these echoing halls hide a killer.
Critics Review
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A wonderfully unique novel from the master of historical crime fiction. Beautiful, haunting, and quite brilliant
Laura Shepherd-Robinson
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A grand piece of work – a triumph and one of Taylor’s best
Mick Herron
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This ticked all the boxes for me. As good as I’d expect from a master of the craft
Val McDermid
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A heady mix of murder, intrigue, and a supernatural interlocutor. Taylor’s prose is characteristically fluid, his ability to conjure empathy for his cast – both real and spectral – wonderfully perceptive, and the plot itself gripping in the very best traditions of mystery writing. A thorough delight from start to finish
Vaseem Khan
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An engrossing, eerie and erudite page turner which maintains the suspense until the very end … I defy anyone not to enjoy this captivating whodunnit!
SW Perry
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A Schooling in Murder captures the period brilliantly and what a loveable main character– a total delight
Leonora Nattrass
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Beguiling
Douglas Skelton
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This most unusual murder mystery – in which the reader is aligned with the murder victim after her death – is an absolute triumph. Andrew Taylor turns the conventions of mystery stories on their head to explore secrets hidden just beneath the surface within a closed community. A Schooling in Murder is clever, tender and utterly haunting.
Tim Major
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Andrew Taylor re-invents the classic crime story with the dark aplomb of a modern master
S.G. MacLean
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A Schooling in Murder is a clever, distinctive, and beautifully written mystery from a crime writer who is top of the class
Martin Edwards
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An ingenious and intriguing homage to the golden age of crime fiction – A Schooling in Murder is both wryly beguiling and steeped in atmospheric tension. I could not put it down
Essie Fox
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Taylor evokes beautifully the tawdry atmosphere, the cast of misfits and the relationships and love affairs that must be hidden, with a lightness of touch that belies the deeper tragic elements of the story. This is a novel of immense charm
Elizabeth Freemantle
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Crime fiction has a new superstar: Annabel Warnock is simply the best narrator I have read in a long time. Acerbic, inquisitive, irrepressible … It hardly matters that she's dead, although of course it matters very much in the plot. This is a splendidly lively and richly entertaining novel. I adored it
Sarah Hilary
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The master of historical crime fiction is back and he's on top form. Taylor has reinvented the classic crime story to create a riveting WWII mystery set within a secretive school amid deadly rivalries. Brilliantly eery and suspenseful. A triumph
Anna Mazzola
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An absolute masterpiece of rising tension
Mirror
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A Schooling in Murder turns the country house mystery inside out with wit and wisdom. Ten out of ten.
The Times
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Taylor's position at the apex of historical crime writers is reinforced
Financial Times
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Taylor’s ability to conjure time past is second to none … a sublime evocation of a closed world in which the adults are, in their way, as powerless as their young charges
Guardian
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Utterly brilliant … It's gripping, funny, stylish and suspenseful with several twists that surprised me
Amanda Craig
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A new departure for this gifted thriller writer… a novel told by a ghost… the veteran Taylor pulls [this] off with considerable aplomb and with the narrative skill his readers have come to expect
Spectator
User Reviews
Book 4.8
Narration 5.0
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4.0 5.0
I don't usually like supernatural elements in novels but found that I readily bought into the dead narrator of this one. It makes for an intriguing plot in an atmospheric setting but I found the resolution a little unsatisfying.
jackdor 2025-08-30
Details
- Author
- Andrew Taylor
- Narrator
- Nathalie Buscombe
- Duration
- 11 hours 13 minutes
- Release Date
- 5 June 2025
- ISBN
- 9780008494261
- Format
- x-book®
- Publisher
- HarperCollins Publishers
- Genre
- Historical fiction, Crime and mystery: women sleuths / detectives, Crime and mystery: private investigator / amateur detectives, Psychological thriller, Classic fiction: literary and general, Classic horror, ghost stories and supernatural fiction
- Rating
- 4.8(4 reviews)
- Narration
- 5.0(4 reviews)
Synopsis
*A Times Best Book of the Year* From the author of The Ashes of London, comes a new historical mystery set in the last days of WWII 'Ten out of ten' The Times ‘A grand piece of work – a triumph and one of Taylor’s best’ MICK HERRON 'A wonderfully unique novel from the master of historical crime fiction. Beautiful, haunting, and quite brilliant' LAURA SHEPHERD-ROBINSON ‘As good as I’d expect from a master of the craft’ VAL MCDERMID 'A wonderful, subtle novel, set in a strange, enclosed world. Beautiful writing and a gloriously satisfying ending' ANN CLEEVES __________ England, May 1945 In the last days of World War II, Monkshill Park School for Girls stands far apart from the violence in Europe. Yet a woman has been murdered in its grounds. Annabel Warnock, a teacher with a secretive past, has disappeared. The teachers and girls whisper that she’s run away, but in fact she has met a violent end. Replacement tutor and amateur crime writer Alec Shaw arrives to find a school riven with bitter rivalries and dangerous tensions. He begins to suspect there is a real-life mystery waiting to be solved… and these echoing halls hide a killer.
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