I received this book as a Christmas present and I must admit over the ensuing weeks I have picked it up several times, yet have not gone on to read it, as the opening pages did not overly grab me. However, the right book mood recently struck me, and I got past those first few pages and I …? Well, you’ll have to keep on reading to see how I got on!
Synopsis
‘She’d known there would be ghosts in Oxford. Martha wasn’t afraid of any headless horsemen, or nuns haunting the local ruins; it was Charlie, always Charlie she was afraid would find her. When an anonymous letter is delivered to the Clarendon English Dictionary, it is rapidly clear that this is not the usual lexicographical enquiry. Instead, the letter hints at secrets and lies linked to a particular year. For Martha Thornhill, the new senior editor, the date can mean only one thing: the summer her brilliant older sister Charlie went missing. After a decade abroad, Martha has returned home to the city whose ancient institutions have long defined her family. Have the ghosts she left behind her been waiting for her return? When more letters arrive, and Martha and her team pull apart the complex clues within them, the mystery becomes ever more insistent and troubling. It seems Charlie had been keeping a powerful secret, and someone is trying to lead the lexicographers towards the truth. But other forces are no less desperate to keep it well and truly buried.’
Overall Thoughts
So why did the opening pages fail to excite me? After all, the first line is plot pertinent and has an ominous ring to it: ‘The day the first letter arrived was warm for the time of year.’ I think a key reason for my drop in interest was that there are significant delays in providing the reader with further information or clarification. Instead, the first few pages are scene-setting description heavy, which really slows the pace. Now this is a reader personal choice. Some love this kind of opening. I do not. This writing strategy rarely grips me, particularly when I am getting it by the paragraph load. I can appreciate in this particular example, these descriptions contain details which establish the world of the book, but I think a different structure might have increased intrigue for the reader. I think novels can get a bit too leisurely with description sometimes. Having given it some thought, I prefer my description to be quirky, humorous and woven into the narrative with threads, rather than with yards of material. The former approach I find tends to make the scene setting more memorable.
The adage of “write what you know” is certainly present in this story’s chosen setting, the Oxford office of the Clarendon English Dictionary (CED). The author shows us the types of conversations to be had in such a place, in the opening chapter, as various pieces of work are discussed. This offers some opportunities for job-based humour:
“Oh, is it my turn for the Shakespeare crank letter again?” Simon sighed theatrically.
“I did it last week,” Alex replied. “Have you got an Oxfordian?”
“Yours was a one-line email!” Simon protested. “This person has sent five thousand words […]”
However, I did wonder if, at times, there were too many etymology in-jokes, leading to bit of an excluding feeling towards the reader, something I did not feel when I read Dorothy L. Sayer’s Murder Must Advertise (1933), another job-set mystery.
The first letter to the CED from the mysterious “Chorus” is definitely unsettling. It is inviting them into a partnership on an unspecified enterprise. Their initial reaction is to ignore it, but the literary allusions lure them in, as does the parallel Chorus makes between their profession and detective work:
‘Your first loyalty is to the evidence […] After all, “evidence” is a term used as much by dictionary writers as by detectives. Two professions that are very similar: in each we hunt for clues, the thread that leads back to the beginning, the impetus that set everything in train. We look at the story before it as even started. And as the evidence builds so the picture completes itself, and a life is exposed.’
It is interesting to watch the characters decode this letter and the others that follow. However, opportunities to armchair detect from them are restricted, as a great deal of outside subject knowledge as well as knowledge of the characters and their world is required. Thus, sleuthing becomes exclusionary, only for the expert and arguably therefore elitist. That is perhaps the difficulty of the setting chosen. So, this is mystery you have partially have to enjoy for the ride. This does not make it a bad book, but you perhaps need to adjust your expectations.
The characters make plausible steps towards discovering that the letter writer is concerned with the disappearance of Charlotte a.k.a. Charlie Thornhill, Martha’s sister, back in 2010, whilst she was working at the CED. The reader is brought up to speed on this via Martha’s work colleagues, who quickly show that the talented Charlie was not necessarily a kind or nice person to be around. Charlie’s secrets are engaging and thematically appropriate.
I liked how the author had Chorus send postcards to a wider group of characters, as this draws up for us a suspect list. What is mentioned on the postcards, hints at dark secrets at times and how the receivers react to their postcard is also telling. Martha therefore has to work with people who are not necessarily sharing all they know, and an obvious source of support is surprisingly unavailable, her father, who is inexplicably combative with her. Moreover, Martha is not lacking in secrets herself, and the reader will have to decide whether her main secret is withheld too long from them or not. The reveal of it is well-executed but given how much time we spend in Martha’s head it does make me feel her lack of direct thoughts on the matter seem a bit implausible. If you have a secret, you normally keep it from others, but not from your own thoughts.
I would not say this is the quickest of books, but it does keep adding to the growing picture of Charlie and the plot is sustained by incremental plot developments. It is all too common for modern crime novels to lull in the middle, only for a landslide of plot events to occur in the final third. So, it is great to see that is not an issue here. Tension and rivalry are created well within the central CED group and this feeds into the shape of the narrative. The CED characters are ones you enjoy being around. Whilst the letter decoding is not overly open to the reader, due to the cast of suspects being few in number, it is not too tricky to identify who Chorus is and the identity of the guilty party.
It is easy to become jaded with celebrity novels, which contrary to their high marketing budgets, can all too often be mediocre or average, but Susie Dent’s debut mystery bucks this trend. It is one I would recommend, and it a story, which has left me interested to see what else she goes on to write next.
Rating: 4.25/5