betatron

Death in the Spires, K.J. Charles. An excellent historical mystery, straddling the turn of the nineteenth century into the twentieth. Years ago, an Oxford student was murdered in his room; thanks to one small detail of this case, the surviving members of his group of friends know that one of their number must have done it. But no one has ever been convicted.

The detail in question felt slightly contrived to me, but I accept it as the set-up for what is otherwise an engaging story about personal relationships. The novel proceeds in two parallel tracks, one building up the history of these friends at university, the other showing what's become of them since the murder. It does the thing a dual-timeline novel needs to do, which is keep suspense around the past: yes, we know who's going to get murdered, but the lead-up to that matters quite a lot, first as we see how this group coalesced into such brilliance they were nicknamed the "Seven Wonders," and then as we see how things fell apart to a degree that you can form plausible arguments for basically anybody being the murderer. (I say "basically" because it's deeply unlikely that the protagonist, who is digging back into the case against the advice of everyone around him, is the killer. There are stories that would pull that trick, but this never pretends it's one of them.)

I found the ending particularly gratifying. The past sections do enough to make you like and sympathize with the characters that finding out who's responsible is genuinely a fraught question; once the answer comes out, there's a deeply satisfying sequence that tackles the question of what justice ought to look like in this situation -- for more than one crime. Those who deserve it wind up with their bonds of friendship tentatively healing after years of rift. I got this rec from Marissa Lingen, and she tells me there will be a sequel; I look forward to it enormously.

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