Campus Crime Novels
Miss Pym Disposes
On any credible list of all time great mysteries, you'll find at least one novel by Joesphine Tey: Daughter of Time, Brat Farrar, The Franchise Affair. They're all fantastic. My pick is Miss Pym Disposes, a brilliant and uncommonly perceptive novel that takes place at a women's college. Pop psychologist Lucy Pym is an alum. She returns for a lecture and ends up staying on for a while, a respite from the hustle and bustle of fame, and she's enjoying the company of the young students. The novel is fascinating for so many reasons, not the least of which is the way in which Miss Pym applies her version of psychology to what she observes, and how the various characters are viewed sympathetically and unsympathetically. The blurb below, which comes from the publsiher, does not do justice to the novel's complexities, especially to its elegant, stunning ending, which leaves us with much to consider, long after we turn the last page.
- Jim Huang, Bookshop Director
Audition for Murder
Black Hour
Department of Rare Books and Special Collections
Midnight at the Bright Idea Bookstore meets The Bookshop of Yesterdays in a stunning debut following a librarian whose quiet life is turned upside down when a priceless manuscript goes missing. Soon she has to ask: what holds more secrets in the library--the ancient books shelved in the stacks, or the people who preserve them?
Liesl Weiss long ago learned to be content working behind the scenes in the distinguished rare books department of a large university, managing details and working behind the scenes to make the head of the department look good. But when her boss has a stroke and she's left to run things, she discovers that the library's most prized manuscript is missing.
Liesl tries to sound the alarm and inform the police about the missing priceless book, but is told repeatedly to keep quiet, to keep the doors open and the donors happy. But then a librarian unexpectedly stops showing up to work. Liesl must investigate both disappearances, unspooling her colleagues' pasts like the threads of a rare book binding as it becomes clear that someone in the department must be responsible for the theft. What Liesl discovers about the dusty manuscripts she has worked among for so long--and about the people who care for and revere them--shakes the very foundation on which she has built her life.
The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections is a sparkling book-club read about a woman struggling to step out from behind the shadows of powerful and unreliable men, and reveals the dark edge of obsession running through the most devoted bookworms.
Gaudy Night: A Lord Peter Wimsey Mystery with Harriet Vane
"Gaudy Night stands out even among Miss Sayers's novels. And Miss Sayers has long stood in a class by herself." --Times Literary Supplement
The great Dorothy L. Sayers is considered by many to be the premier detective novelist of the Golden Age, and her dashing sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, one of mystery fiction's most enduring and endearing protagonists. Acclaimed author Ruth Rendell has expressed her admiration for Sayers's work, praising her "great fertility of invention, ingenuity, and wonderful eye for detail." The third Dorothy L. Sayers classic to feature mystery writer Harriet Vane, Gaudy Night features an introduction by Elizabeth George, herself a crime fiction master. Gaudy Night takes Harriet and her paramour, Lord Peter, to Oxford University, Harriet's alma mater, for a reunion, only to find themselves the targets of a nightmare of harassment and mysterious, murderous threats.
Horizontal Man
Lost Keats
Murder Is Pathological
Maggie Ryan # 3