1995 mystery; first of Cutler's novels of Sophie Rivers, a teacher in
a sixth-form college in Birmingham. Finding one of her students
stabbed to death in the lift is bad enough; when her best friend dies
in a way that seems plausibly accidental except to people who knew him
well, Sophie knows she'll have to look into the situation herself.
Sophie is also a part-time choral singer, and it seems at first
she's involved in two distinct cases: the student was involved with
some dodgy dealings, and nobody seems to have had a motive to kill her
old friend George. She looks into both matters, while trying also to
juggle her professional lives and a variety of stunning men, in
particular the American guest conductor who seems to have taken a
sudden shine to her.
This book is set in 1995, when a mobile phone is still a showy thing
to carry about, the Internet is just a vicious rumour, and possession
of a modem is a sign of deep technical wizardry. But it's also set in
Birmingham, and Sophie's college life crosses multiple ethnic groups,
each with their own concerns. What's particularly effective is that
this isn't just about the white people interacting with the Sikhs, the
white people interacting with the Muslims, etc.; it's also about how
the Muslims feel about the Sikhs, and so on in combination.
On the orchestral side, everyone is clearly white, but Cutler
doesn't try to make a Point out of it: that's just the way things are
in that particular world at that time, and the reader can draw his own
conclusions about how sensible that is by contrast with the college
side. (Possibly some of the non-white people are a bit too good, but
at least we have some non-white bad guys too.)
The mystery should present no challenge to the experienced reader, and
Sophie is perhaps less suspicious than she should be, but it all comes
out in the end. It's perhaps a little flabby in places, but it's
carried by the characters: Sophie herself is sympathetic in a way that
her near-contemporary Jordan Lacey (in Stella Whitelaw's books) often
doesn't manage. She's unashamed about sexual desire, but not desperate
or stupid in indulging it. And she does things other than merely
detect. The rest of the cast suggest that there's more to be written
about them too, and they're all people who seem real enough that one
might go out for a drink with them.
Followed by Dying to Write.
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