Oxford Remains by
Veronica Stallwood
hbk out June 04
Published by Headline
at £17.99
A new Kate Ivory story from Veronica Stallwood is always
something to savour, as after ten such books one anticipates with
pleasure the familiar characters and locale. As with so many good
series, the reader feels comfortable with the style and the
personalities of the characters, which is why I was rather
disappointed with Oxford Remains. Sure, the same Kate Ivory, her
mother Roz and dowdy Emma are there, but the book is diluted by a
new experiment of Ms Stallwood which seemed somewhat out of
place. She has alternated every chapter with a kind of diary-cum-
biography of one of the new characters, written in the first person in
a different typeface. It almost felt as if two separate books had been
bound within the same cover. True, the significance of what seems at
the start to be a total irrelevance comes together at the end, but I felt
the experiment was not an unqualified success.
As to the conventional part of the story, Kate is persuaded by a
friend at Bartlemas College to give her opinion on a complaint by a
girl student, Daisy Tompkins, about academic persecution by her
tutor Joseph Fechan, who turns out to be the author of all the
interpolated chapters. Kate is not much help and before she gets very
far, Daisy is found strangled and obviously Fechan is suspect
Number One. Kate digs around, with interruptions from decorating
her new house, a temporary make-over transformation by seedy
Emma, to say nothing of the latest affair of her agent Estelle, and
comes up with the answer. I wouldn't go so far to say that this was a
bit of a cheat, but it lies in that direction.
I finished the book with a twinge of regret for pleasure somewhat
unfulfilled and hope that the author will go back to her well-tried and
popular formula for the next Kate Ivory yarn.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
Oxford Remains by
Veronica Stallwood
