A Schooling in Murder
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Get 3 months for £0.99/mo
A Schooling in Murder
Buy Now for £12.99
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Narrated by:
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Nathalie Buscombe
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By:
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Andrew Taylor
About this listen
'Ten out of ten' The Times
‘A grand piece of work – a triumph and one of Taylor’s best’ MICK HERRON
'A wonderfully unique novel from the master of historical crime fiction. Beautiful, haunting, and quite brilliant' LAURA SHEPHERD-ROBINSON
‘As good as I’d expect from a master of the craft’ VAL MCDERMID
'A wonderful, subtle novel, set in a strange, enclosed world. Beautiful writing and a gloriously satisfying ending' ANN CLEEVES
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England, May 1945
In the last days of World War II, Monkshill Park School for Girls stands far apart from the violence in Europe. Yet a woman has been murdered in its grounds.
Annabel Warnock, a teacher with a secretive past, has disappeared. The teachers and girls whisper that she’s run away, but in fact she has met a violent end.
Replacement tutor and amateur crime writer Alec Shaw arrives to find a school riven with bitter rivalries and dangerous tensions. He begins to suspect there is a real-life mystery waiting to be solved… and these echoing halls hide a killer.
©2025 Andrew Taylor (P)2025 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
A wonderfully unique novel from the master of historical crime fiction. Beautiful, haunting, and quite brilliant
(Laura Shepherd-Robinson)A grand piece of work – a triumph and one of Taylor’s best
(Mick Herron)This ticked all the boxes for me. As good as I’d expect from a master of the craft
(Val McDermid)A heady mix of murder, intrigue, and a supernatural interlocutor. Taylor’s prose is characteristically fluid, his ability to conjure empathy for his cast – both real and spectral – wonderfully perceptive, and the plot itself gripping in the very best traditions of mystery writing. A thorough delight from start to finish
(Vaseem Khan)An engrossing, eerie and erudite page turner which maintains the suspense until the very end … I defy anyone not to enjoy this captivating whodunnit!
(SW Perry)A Schooling in Murder captures the period brilliantly and what a loveable main character– a total delight
(Leonora Nattrass)Beguiling
(Douglas Skelton)This most unusual murder mystery – in which the reader is aligned with the murder victim after her death – is an absolute triumph. Andrew Taylor turns the conventions of mystery stories on their head to explore secrets hidden just beneath the surface within a closed community. A Schooling in Murder is clever, tender and utterly haunting.
(Tim Major)Andrew Taylor re-invents the classic crime story with the dark aplomb of a modern master
(S.G. MacLean)A Schooling in Murder is a clever, distinctive, and beautifully written mystery from a crime writer who is top of the class
(Martin Edwards)An ingenious and intriguing homage to the golden age of crime fiction – A Schooling in Murder is both wryly beguiling and steeped in atmospheric tension. I could not put it down
(Essie Fox)Taylor evokes beautifully the tawdry atmosphere, the cast of misfits and the relationships and love affairs that must be hidden, with a lightness of touch that belies the deeper tragic elements of the story. This is a novel of immense charm
(Elizabeth Freemantle)Crime fiction has a new superstar: Annabel Warnock is simply the best narrator I have read in a long time. Acerbic, inquisitive, irrepressible … It hardly matters that she's dead, although of course it matters very much in the plot. This is a splendidly lively and richly entertaining novel. I adored it
(Sarah Hilary)Fascinating Detail
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Excellent listen
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Brilliant Story! Brilliant Narration!
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Set brilliantly in a struggling girls’ boarding school just after the World War II. At time of uncertainty, financial struggles and the conflict in the Far East still to be resolved.
A wonderful balance of adults and children. The teachers and pupils and those working in auxiliary services to allow the establishment to just keep its balance sheet in the black.
The interesting element to story is that a murder has happened. It is beyond the classic whodunnit as the victim is the narrator of the text. A ghost walking the grounds of the school and the places she had been in life. Now trying to find a means to communicate with the living and solve her murder.
A fascinating location for a murder mystery
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Sorry, I just had to jump ahead
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