Review: Death in the Spires by KJ Charles
The newspapers called us the Seven Wonders. We were a group of friends, that’s all, and then Toby died. Was killed. Murdered.
1905. A decade after the grisly murder of Oxford student Toby Feynsham, the case remains hauntingly unsolved. For Jeremy Kite, the crime not only stole his best friend, it destroyed his whole life. When an anonymous letter lands on his desk, accusing him of having killed Toby, Jem becomes obsessed with finally uncovering the truth.
Jem begins to track down the people who were there the night Toby died – a close circle of friends once known as the ‘Seven Wonders’ for their charm and talent – only to find them as tormented and broken as himself. All of them knew and loved Toby at Oxford. Could one of them really be his killer?
As Jem grows closer to uncovering what happened that night, his pursuer grows bolder, making increasingly terrifying attempts to silence him for good. Will exposing Toby’s killer put to rest the shadows that have darkened Jem’s life for so long? Or will the gruesome truth only put him in more danger?
Some secrets are better left buried…
Review:
Dear KJ Charles,
I tagged this story as a mystery and romance despite your warning that it was not in fact a romance. IMO the romantic storyline here is at least as strong as the mystery one and to me the ending is very hopeful. This book is one of the very few books that I have read where I thought that a hopeful ending did not belong though.
But let us back track a little. The main reason I bought this book was actually because of the warning. I really liked this author’s writing and have read quite a few of her books but at some point her romances stopped working for me. So when I saw a mystery I said oh excellent and one clicked almost right away.
As the blurb tells you, after receiving an anonymous letter accusing Jem of murdering his friend over a decide ago. Jem decides to investigate and find out which one of his friends indeed killed Toby, since Jem knows for a fact that he in fact did not do that.
“What he wanted was to know who had killed Toby. Not who had sent one more malicious letter: that didn’t matter. There were always letter-writers; they were legion and would never stop. He wanted to know which of them, which of his friends, which of the people he’d most loved and trusted in the world had put a knife in Toby’s ribs, jammed the door, and walked away. That was the great unspoken truth that had festered for a decade. It was one of the six of them, and they knew it for the simple reason that Toby’s door had been stuck.”
Jem is presumably a very smart person (he came to Oxford on full scholarship and won some distinctions while he was there). However he cannot come up with any better way to figure out who of his friends killed his other friend than to come out to them and basically say (not a quote of course, but IMO a pretty close summary!) – Did you kill him? Did you? But you could be lying. What if I am lying? I swear to god in the beginning of the story I thought that author may have been writing a satire of the mystery genre.
Then I changed my mind though because at about the halfway point of the story Jem, in the process of his so called investigation, reunites with the object of his pining in the university. I understand that this is supposedly while he still investigates but that felt to me more like “reunited lovers” or “second chance romance” or “what say you” story.
It felt as if mystery was more like a setting for romance if that makes sense even though it was so not mysterious and easy to figure out because it was being repeated over and over again (the motive for the killer)
I really liked the Oxford setting and the whole feel of it but really the setting is the only thing I liked. I am sorry but the mystery to me was not strong at all.
Spoiler: Show
Spoiler: Show
As a mystery, the ending, it frustrated me a great deal. I like my villains properly punished.
I read some reviews after I was done with the book and it does look like I am very much an outlier here, but sometimes that happens.
Grade: C/C-
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I usually hate mysteries in which the MC goes around asking the suspects questions instead of looking for actual clues, motives, etc. But given that this is KJC using some of my favorite tropes – outsider briefly becomes part of inner circle, understated romance (I know KJC explicitly said it’s NOT a romance, but it sure felt like one to me), morally gray characters, late Victorian era setting – I let it slide. One of the few times that I had a very different reaction to a book than you did! That’s okay, it would be boring if we had identical tastes.
Oh definitely as I mentioned in the review I noticed that I am very much an outlier on this :).
I think I liked it a little better than you did Sirius, but it was a B read, which is not what I expect from KJ Charles. It wasn’t as immersive as I like – usually I can sink in to a KJ Charles book and lose myself.
It didn’t bother me that the murderer was really obvious, but I tend to focus on the characters and relationships when I read a mystery, rather than on solving the mystery. The lack of justice didn’t particularly bother me, but the resolution of the romance did bother me – I know it’s not a genre romance and it did end on an HFN, but I can’t see how they’ll really be able to make it work, given everything, and that troubled me. I did enjoy the process of the narrator grappling with what happened at Oxford and what it meant and which relationships were worth reigniting and which were not.
I happened to have read Maurice earlier this year, so it was interesting to read another book about queer young men navigating Oxford in Edwardian England.
@cleo: Oh sure I absolutely want the characters to be memorable when I read the mystery, that is why I read and reread and listened and re listened many times “Nero Wolfe mysteries” for example. I know who did what, but I do read for Archie Goodwin’s narration and for relationship between him and Wolfe. However, before I get attached to the characters, I need the mystery to engage me and man I found mystery part really weak. IMO of course, but that bothered me a lot.
I also keep thinking about it and I think that I was being a little resentful as the story went along, because I kept thinking if it acts like a romance, talks like a romance, most importantly *ends* like romance, what is it if not one? I kind of feel as if the author wanted to write a romance with a really ambiguous characters, but did not want romance readers to get upset if that did not work, so she gave that warning. Again, that is me speculating, have not read/heard author saying anything like this, but I have bought the book, read the book, keep thinking about the book and formed that conclusion in my head.
Anyway, I was disappointed. I picked it up specifically because I was told that it was not a romance but a mystery, and to me mystery did not work at all and I hated you know who.
Sorry Cleo forgot to say that Maurice remains one of my favorite books ever still.
I think that I was being a little resentful as the story went along, because I kept thinking if it acts like a romance, talks like a romance, most importantly *ends* like romance, what is it if not one? I kind of feel as if the author wanted to write a romance with a really ambiguous characters, but did not want romance readers to get upset if that did not work, so she gave that warning.
I think that’s a fair assessment!
@Cleo and @Sirius: I remember really liking Maurice when I read it as a teen and I’ve been wanting to revisit it.
E.M. Forster is one of my favorite authors (in the top ten at least, but probably more like top five). Grant you, I coudln’t get into Howards End but I’ve read A Room a View many times, remember being blown away by Where Angels Fear to Tread, and am saving A Passage to India for a rainy day. The man wrote so many classics! I haven’t tried The Longest Journey (his own favorite of all his books, but everyone else seems to think it is a lesser one) but I want to. He wrote some fantasy and SF short stories as well, and his nonfiction work Aspects of the Novel is a great favorite of mine. All just to say, if you loved Maurice, you should try his other stuff too.
< /fangirl plug>
@Janine: I have “A room with a view” I should get to it one day. Thank you.