A Schooling in Murder

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

The master of historical crime fiction is back and he's on top form. Taylor has reinvented the classic crime story to create a riveting WWII mystery set within a secretive school amid deadly rivalries. Brilliantly eery and suspenseful. A triumph

-- Anna Mazzola

An absolute masterpiece of rising tension

― Mirror

A Schooling in Murder turns the country house mystery inside out with wit and wisdom. Ten out of ten.

― The Times

Taylor's position at the apex of historical crime writers is reinforced

― Financial Times

Taylor’s ability to conjure time past is second to none … a sublime evocation of a closed world in which the adults are, in their way, as powerless as their young charges

― Guardian

Utterly brilliant … It's gripping, funny, stylish and suspenseful with several twists that surprised me

-- Amanda Craig

A new departure for this gifted thriller writer… a novel told by a ghost… the veteran Taylor pulls [this] off with considerable aplomb and with the narrative skill his readers have come to expect

― Spectator