A Degree of Murder by Maz Evans💙📚
Jodi Taylor #BookRecommendation
This is a wonderfully clever black comedy of tangled relationships, sinister events, deception, downright lying, copious amounts of alcohol and inappropriate sex. Together with an impeccably timed series of shocks peppered throughout the whole book, I tore through the whole thing much, much too quickly. In fact, I loved it so much that I went straight back to the beginning to read it again, because I’m pretty sure some of the finer points passed me by.
There’s quite a large cast of well-drawn characters, and the victims, murderers and witnesses include:
Silly Tillie – the good time girl
Rob – the writer
Marty – the conspiracy theorist
JD – the wide boy
Lilah and Diana – the talented twins
Mags – the mature student
Ed – the boy with everything
Lawrence – the musician
Ryan – the tech giant
Bill – the tutor
The story is set in Bathory College and ranges over a twenty-five-year period from Graduation Day in 2000 to the Class Reunion of 2025 and is told by all the characters as they experience various important events in their lives, together with entertaining updates from the editor of the Bathory Bulletins – Tillie Johnson – a woman who, hilariously, genuinely has no idea what’s going on around her. Talk about getting the wrong end of the stick. Every time …
Not everyone survives – not by a long shot – and there’s twist upon twist at the end.
The best bit for me was that, for a large part of the book, the reader has no idea who the victim is, let alone the murderer. The court scenes are very cleverly handled and manage to contribute greatly to the story without giving anything away and the whole thing gallops along at a terrific pace.
Maz Evans has written two other books – That’ll Teach Her and Over My Dead Body which I think I’ll check out.
PS. And I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or otherwise, but is it possible that the university is named after Elizabeth Bathory, a Hungarian noblewoman and serial killer, also known as The Blood Countess? I do hope so.
Alas! Alack! "Not available for purchase in [my] country." What have I done to the UK? Have I not toured the Tower of London, the British Museum and the National Army Museum? Did I not walk along Hadrian's Wall and do a battlefield walk of Bosworth? (Before they moved the battlefield. You still owe us at least a short story on that one.) Do I not own enough British spy and mystery novels to set up my own library, and have a subscription to "Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy?" And now they won't even sell me a mystery novel--Great Britain's best-beloved export.
I'm going to sit right here in middle America and sulk.