What makes an academic institution the perfect setting for fictional crime? Perhaps it’s because there is so much at stake when a child or young adult is exposed to a crime. A campus, whether primary, secondary or tertiary, offers the potential for a juicy closed-room thriller – not to mention a substantial roll of suspects from a pool of pupils, teachers and parents.
When I wrote my third novel The School Run, I chose a fictional private high school for my sinister goings-on. St Ignatius Boys’ Grammar was an institution so hallowed and revered that mothers would do anything to get an admissions offer for their sons – including commit murder. It was so intriguing to me, the idea of this wealthy battlefield: a prestigious, academic and historic place, with lawns and cricket pavilions ripe for murder and corridors that were ominous and threatening after dark.
I was inspired, in part, by my son starting high school, and also the aftermath of the 2019 college admissions scandal – the now infamous criminal conspiracy by celebrities and college officials to influence undergraduate admissions. It made me think: if a mother will commit this kind of a crime for her child, what else would she do? How far would she go?
I’m a huge fan of campus novels purely for the intrigue and the fruitful platter of suspects. When I was making this list there were so many gritty stories that sprang to mind. Here are six of my favourites.
The Secret History, by Donna Tartt
This has to be the ultimate in campus crime novels, and it is certainly my favourite. Richard is recounting his years at an elite university in Vermont, and straight away we learn he and a group of fellow students – under the influence of their cult-like Ancient Greek professor – killed an unlikeable student named Bunny. I read this novel in a tent in Kenya on safari several years ago and the eeriness was real as I flipped the pages. It is not so much an action-packed whodunnit but an intellectual thriller that will give you the chills as much for its creepiness as its outstanding cleverness.
What Was She Thinking? (Notes on a Scandal), by Zoe Heller
Barbara Covett is a lonely and introverted school teacher who attaches herself to the new art teacher at St George’s School in north London, the whimsical and childlike Sheba Hart. When Sheba begins an illicit affair with a fifteen-year-old male pupil, Barbara uses the situation to her own advantage, claiming a sort of ‘ownership’ over Sheba. The crime in this story (nominated for the 2003 Man Booker Prize and later made in to a film starring Cate Blanchett and Dame Judi Dench) is obviously Sheba’s sexual relationship with a minor, which makes for uncomfortable reading. But so does Barbara. A gritty psychological thriller that touches on obsession, victimhood and regret.
Anatomy of a Scandal, by Sarah Vaughan
Politicians who believe themselves above the law, a drunken night at Oxford University that sees a man killed and a woman left deeply traumatised, and a court case with an almighty twist. This story, which was recently adapted for Netflix, is told in current day London, and also via flashbacks to our protagonists are at Oxford University swilling booze and behaving badly. One night it all goes horribly wrong and a woman’s life is destroyed forever due to an horrific sexual assault, and so she seeks her lawful revenge in the present day.
Oxford holds its own as a character in this novel, the university as debauched and unscrupulous as its campus inhabitants.
The Scholar, by Dervla McTiernan
Irish-Australian author McTiernan is well known for her gritty crime novels, and this, her second, is set at Ireland’s Galway University. It centres around the hit and run of a young woman who is the daughter of the head of a pharmaceutical giant, Darcy Therapeutics. The company’s influence is vast, from government to philanthropy, and so when the evidence begins to point towards a Darcy laboratory, the stakes for those involved become terrifyingly high. The second in McTiernan’s Detective Cormac Reilly series, this novel is propulsive, twisty and perfect for those who love a tense police procedural.
Who We Were, by B.M. Carroll
The tagline for this story is: ‘It’s been twenty years, but all is not forgiven.’ A tantalising story split between the current day with a school reunion in the planning, and back at Macquarie High when there was an adored (and hated) queen bee, a cruel bully and a hapless victim. Friends and enemies are brought back together as adults, reunited for the first time in two decades, and they bring with them the grudges they have each held on to since their teens. Not a knife-wielding, hold-your-breath-for-the-murder crime novel, but rather a clever campus noir with a good deal of focus on character and motive. Liane Moriarty called it ‘addictive’ for a reason.
Cat Among the Pigeons, by Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie fed and watered my love of crime stories as a teenager. This novel, first published in 1959, is set at exclusive girls’ school called Meadowbank where the body of the games mistress at is found in the sports pavilion among the lacrosse sticks. She has been shot through the heart, and now there is a cat among the pigeons. Enter Christie’s most famous character, Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, to investigate. The story is typical Christie with a somehow more light-hearted tone, although as one reviewer puts it ‘there is a shocking lack of cats and pigeons in this book’.
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