A Schooling in Murder

Andrew Taylor was a favourite author of mine but suddenly that was a couple of decades ago. I enjoyed the Lydmouth mysteries, the Roth series and read many of his earlier mystery books too. Then he started writing historical doorstep mysteries and I drifted away, though I’m not really sure why since it looks like I’ve enjoyed what I have read of them. Anyhow, I happened upon this and it looked like it might be more in the vein of his earlier work.

It’s 1945, the war has just ended, and we’re at a girl’s boarding school in the same general area as where the Lydmouth series was set. One of the teachers has just been pushed to her death into the River Wye, but no one knows that yet. I was a big fan of girl’s school stories as a kid and as an adult I enjoy these more realistic portrayals of them. The infighting, the teachers who aren’t up the job, the spiteful nasty children, the worries about the budget and the dilapidated accommodation, the sucking up to the wealthy parents, illicit relationships between the staff, it’s all here and, to be honest, I feel like it was probably all there in something like the Chalet School as well but as an undertone. Times are changing and the girls need teaching more than dancing and how to manage their hypothetical future household staff, and Monkshill Park is not really up to the job. Definitely a fun setting to explore.

The story quickly goes off on something that I wouldn’t tolerate in many authors though. It’s clear after a couple of pages that the narrator is the victim speaking from some place beyond the grave where she’s able to wander about and watch and listen to those who are still alive. I’m not a big fan of ghost stories. That’s possibly because I don’t give them much of a chance having been burned by too much reliance on ghosts as deus ex machina in stories I read as a child, it’s funny how you hang onto things long after! This was definitely an enjoyable, non-horror, not-scary take on ghosts though. Just a young woman trying to get to the bottom of why she was pushed off a cliff. I really enjoyed it and I’m planning to try more of Taylor’s recent books as a result. I was going to pick The American Boy as I found out in the afterword of this book that it shares a setting with this book. Except apparently I already read that one twenty-one years ago and enjoyed it. Good job I keep records or I feel my life would probably spin around in circles repeating itself.