#nayana currimbho

[oldshrewsburyian]

Apologies if I already asked this, but recs for campus detective novels? I will be buried with my copies of Gaudy Night, but I want to try some other authors over the summer in between researching for my prospectus.

I do! Also set in Oxford is Robert Robertson's Landscape with Dead Dons, and it is uproariously funny.

Obviously the premise of the campus novel relies on an American setting, but if we do take Oxford (bless it) as providing an insulated setting suitable to the requirements of the genre, Edmund Crispin's Gervase Fen novels would count. And Swan Song contains so many Wagner jokes... which I realize will only be a recommendation if you like that sort of thing (I do.)

Guillermo Martínez, The Oxford Murders, is (obviously) still in Oxford. It might be a shade over-clever for my taste, which I astonish myself by saying. Perhaps the problem is that it's written by a mathematician and I will take any amount of excessive cleverness dished out by my fellow humanists.

Sebastian Faulks, Engleby, is a dark and extremely intelligent mystery that starts at a university, and arguably would not have developed in the way that it did without the university setting.

Nayana Currimbhoy, Miss Timmins' School for Girls, is a satisfying classic mystery plot with a richly atmospheric evocation of the place and time (and monsoon season!) in which it is set.

Geoff Cebula, Adjunct, is brilliant, inventive, and will make you laugh-cry about the realism of its academic setting, I suspect, if you've ever been precariously employed at a university.

Carol Goodman, The Lake of Dead Languages, would count, I think, but I remember its prose (favorably!) better than its plot.

Elaine Hsieh Chou, Disorientation, is an academic mystery rather than the murderous kind, but no less satisfying as a classic detective puzzle for that, in my view.

I'll also add this list of campus mysteries for good measure, though I've read few of them myself.

#campus novel #my detection obsession #book recommendations #asks and answers #nayana currimbho #elaine hsieh chou #carol goodman #geoff cebula #sebastian faulks #guillermo martinez #edmund crispin #robert robertson