"The Shivering Turn" introduces ex-policewoman turned private investigator, Jennie Redhead, and is set in the historic British city of Oxford. From the northern county of Lancashire, she studied at Oxford herself and got her degree in English Literature. And guess what? She IS a redhead! She views the fact that her hair matches her name to be a curse she is forced to endure.
Of her family Jennie says: "We allowed our worries and fears, our angers and resentment, to quietly fester away beneath a veneer of amiability". Her emotion-starved home life has made her distant in her relationships. Of her father she said that he lived a life "in which joy was sacrificed on the altar of respectability".
Jennie left the Thames Valley police when she discovered one of her superiors to be corrupt. She still has a few contacts within the police, one of whom is DS George Hobson, her friend and former lover.
Not yet thirty years old, Jennie is struggling to make ends meet when she is hired to find Linda, the seventeen-year-old daughter of Mary Corbet, who just happens to be married to Tom Corbet, an inspector with Thames Valley Police.
Jennie reluctantly begins investigating and discovers that Linda was somehow involved with one of the University's myriad student societies named "The Shivering Turn Society". The society was named for a poem by metaphysical poet Robert Cudlip.
"And dare you face your urges and desires,
Embracing both the good and bad you own,
Or will you, like a cold and errant coward
Abandon all and make a shivering turn?"
Jennie enlists the aid of Charles Swift, St. Luke's College's bursar, an old friend from the time she was a student there herself. Travelling about the historic city on her trusty bicycle, Jennie also visits the Bodleian Library to do some research on the poet.
While interviewing members of the Society, Jennie discovers them to be arrogant, privileged, young men who all need an attitude adjustment. Their leader, Crispin, excels at making others feel inferior, and he delights on showing everyone how clever he is.
I loved how the author inserted a brief line or two to connect Jennie Redhead to Monika Paniatowski, one of his other successful series protagonists.
Written with finesse and a 'tongue-in-cheek' humour, "The Shivering Turn" was a very enjoyable mystery with more than one ironic plot twist. The setting was an integral part of the story line, and the characterization was well wrought. This is a series I plan to follow!
4.5 stars rounded up for Amazon
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Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2017
Top reviews from other countries
- MR DAVID A HOLTReviewed in the United Kingdom on April 7, 2017
Excellent start for a new character in a new series
