I listened to this audiobook over the summer and enjoyed it, but forgot about it. I started listening again recently, and it took me at least half an hour into it before I could tell that I had listened to it previously. Even then, the plot did not come rushing back to memory. Passages sounded familiar but they were also so generic that they might appear in any contemporary British mystery novel. There are many characters and it takes a while to work out what the crime is, let alone who the suspects are. The focus is more on people’s stories rather than the mystery. Unfortunately, few of the characters are particularly interesting. The writing is undemanding and the plot moves quickly, jumping from character to character and back and forth in time, it is easy to gain momentum with the reading, but it never sparkles.

There are themes of topical interest: a headmaster who may have had inappropriate relationships with students, a schoolgirl with a crush on a teacher, a girl who has to cope with her paranoid mother, and a smart teen, Freddie, who has interpersonal problems. The best scene in the book is when Freddie sets out to ask a girl he likes to go to a dance with him — it has a lot of charm. Unfortunately, that highlights the dullness of the rest of the book.

© 2019 Christian Perring

Christian Perring teaches in NYC.