The Wyndham Case

Great cozy mystery with an engaging amateur detective. I had a great time with this. I'll be looking for the rest of the series. I liked that the story didn't end with just finding the killer, but went on to clear up all the loose ends. Reminds me of Dorothy Sayers, though Imogen Quy is not as super hero like as Lord Peter Wimsey.

This is the first in the series featuring Imogen Quy (rhymes with why) as an interested party in a detective novel. She's not the detective, she's the nurse at a fictional Cambridge college, but she gets involved in trying to get to the bottom of the murder, alongside the police. However, she's also interested in getting to the heart of the matter, not just finding who did it. So there's an element of conflict between her & the police, in the person of Mike Parsons, who she knows personally. The victim is one of the students and the case has a number of different characters getting involved such that he really is killed by a contatenation of circumstances, not by a single person or act. But it's a reasonable read, some of the clues are show more sitting there staring you in the face, but it's not as if the whole story is immediately obvious. I've read 2 before, 3 & 4 are also on the shelf. show less

First in a British mystery series featuring Imogen Quy, the college nurse for St. Agatha’s college at Cambridge. This was a new-to-me author, and despite finding the main character a bit stodgy and the writing style a bit formal and stuffy, I actually devoured this book in one evening. Well-plotted, wonderful descriptions, and over the course of the book I did warm up to the main character eventually. When one of the students is found dead inside the locked Wyndham Library at the college, speculation begins as to whether he was murdered or it was an accident. Aside from his head injury, which appears to have happened in a fall, there was no initial evidence of foul play. But how did he get into the library in the first place? The show more students are being decidedly uncooperative with the police, and Imogen’s friend, DS Mike Parsons, asks her to see if she can influence them to be more forthcoming with information. I actually did figure the mystery out fairly early, but I wasn’t sure enough of my deduction and wanted to read to the end to find out. Definitely want to read more! show less

I picked this up through recommendations and because the author published a completion of Dorothy L Sayers' final Wimsey book. Its the first of a series, and I would describe it as a cozy mystery, although there is blood and dead bodies. It has quite a clever plotline, which goes beyond finding the murderer. Good quality writing (I just hate it when I find grammar and word choice errors) from an author who knows her location very well. I shall certainly look out for more.

This is an interesting introduction to Cambridge University nurse Imogene Quy who helps solve the case of the murder of an undergraduate found in a pool of blood in a special literary collection. The collection is special because it is so full of outdated information that it brings funds to the College in which it resides.

The characters are all very well drawn, even the minor ones and the story moves along to a good conclusion. I look forward to the nest in the series.

Jill Paton Walsh writes follow up books to the Dorothy L Sayers Peter Wimsey books. They always sound quite interesting but the one time I tried Dorothy L Sayers I couldn't stand Wimsey, so I didn't really want to read a follow up. But this is a book featuring characters of her own so I thought I'd try it. I'm not sure if that makes any sense really, but that's how it was anyway!

This is a fairly old fashioned type of mystery even though it was written in the 1990s. Imogen Quy is the college nurse at St Agatha's College, Cambridge and does some fairly gentle old fashioned type of investigating when a student is found dead on the floor of a locked library. It's nothing ground breaking, it's entertaining and I'll probably read another in show more the series at some point. show less

Hardcover