A Schooling in Murder
- Author Andrew Taylor
- Narrator Nathalie Buscombe
- Publisher HarperCollins Publishers
- Publish Date 5 June 2025
- Run Time 11 hours and 13 minutes
- Format x-book®
- Genre Classic fiction, Classic horror and ghost stories, Crime and mystery: private investigator / amateur detectives, Crime and mystery: women sleuths, Historical fiction, Psychological thriller.
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What to expect
*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.
Critics Review
A wonderfully unique novel from the master of historical crime fiction. Beautiful, haunting, and quite brilliant
nA grand piece of work – a triumph and one of Taylor’s best
nThis ticked all the boxes for me. As good as I’d expect from a master of the craft
nA 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
nAn engrossing, eerie and erudite page turner which maintains the suspense until the very end … I defy anyone not to enjoy this captivating whodunnit!
nA Schooling in Murder captures the period brilliantly and what a loveable main character– a total delight
nBeguiling
nThis 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.
nAndrew Taylor re-invents the classic crime story with the dark aplomb of a modern master
nA Schooling in Murder is a clever, distinctive, and beautifully written mystery from a crime writer who is top of the class
nAn 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
nTaylor 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
nCrime 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
nThe 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
nAn absolute masterpiece of rising tension
nA Schooling in Murder turns the country house mystery inside out with wit and wisdom. Ten out of ten.
nTaylor's position at the apex of historical crime writers is reinforced
nTaylor’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
nUtterly brilliant … It's gripping, funny, stylish and suspenseful with several twists that surprised me
nA 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
nUser Reviews
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