Death on the Cherwell

October 13, 2014
Originally published in 1935, this Golden Age mystery from Hay (1894â1979) offers a mesmerizing plot and credible characters. When four first-year students at Oxford's Persephone College gather on the gently sloping roof of a boathouse overlooking the river Cherwell to form a secret society, they notice Myra Denning, the college bursar, lying in a canoe drifting down the river. Upon pulling the canoe to shore, the four undergraduatesâSally Watson, Daphne Loveridge, Gwyneth Pane, and Nina Harsonâfind that Miss Denning is dead, perhaps drowned. While none of the four was particularly fond of the bursar, they all do what they can to help the police in what becomes a homicide case. Investigating on their own, Sally, Daphne, Gwyneth and Nina manage to unearth secrets that lead to a dramatic conclusion. Readers will be grateful that this classic wasn't lost for present and future mystery lovers to enjoy.

Four high-spirited undergrads investigate the death of their school's bursar.When Sally Watson, Daphne Loveridge, Gwyneth Pane, and Nina Harson gather on the roof of Persephone College's boathouse to form the Lode League for the express purpose of cursing their bursar for blighting their life with petty economies, the last thing they expect is for her to be plucked immediately from their midst. But as they recite the poems and prepare to exchange the rings that constitute their initiation rite, a canoe carrying the bursar's body floats down the Cherwell below them. After pulling the late Myra Denning from the boat and notifying Miss Cordrell, their principal, they retire to Daphne's room to toast crumpets and discuss a new purpose for their group: to unmask the bursar's killer. Scorning the efforts of Inspector Wythe of the local police, they interview Draga Czernak, the excitable Yugoslavian student who was probably the last to see the victim alive, and tromp across the grounds of Ferry House, a nearby estate owned by misogynistic Ezekiel Lond and coveted by the bursar and the principal for possible expansion. Characteristically, the girls show almost no interest in asking who might have wanted to kill Myra Denning, referring to her exclusively by her title and never by name. Like so much else in their lives, the bursar's death gives the girls the chance for a lark and an opportunity to show the world how clever they are. Light on puzzle and detection, this reprint of Hay's 1935 tale is probably of greatest interest as a historical totem. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 15, 2016
A group of undergraduates at a women's college at Oxford University in the 1930s meet on a winter's day on top of a boathouse next to the River Cherwell. They're meeting to form a club dedicated to the destruction of the detested bursar of Persephone College, Myra Denning. As they plot, a canoe drifts up, containing the drowned body of the bursar. Was the bursar's death accidental, the result of a prank gone awry, or cold-blooded murder? The members of the club decide they must investigate before word of their suspicious-sounding club leaks out. The result is a wonderful one of us may be the murderer tangle, encompassing fraud and passion in the college itself. Hay, who also wrote Murder Underground (1934), crafted a witty and sometimes scathing account of women at Oxford at a time when they were only grudgingly accepted. As Stephen Booth points out in his introduction, Hay's novel was published the same year (1935) as Dorothy L. Sayers' Oxford-centered Gaudy Night. Another worthy rerelease in the British Library Crime Classics series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)