Recommendations from our site
“Magpie Lane takes place in an academic setting. It’s set in an ancient college—I think it’s Corpus Christi, though it’s not called that in the book—and the child who goes missing is the daughter of the Master. He and his slightly erratic second wife live in the marvellous old Master’s Lodgings with lots of cubbyholes and secret places where odd things start happening. There’s a very spooky frisson to the whole thing. It’s beautifully done. Lucy Atkins writes like an angel. She takes a lot of time on her books, and you can really see where the love and effort has gone. In this book, she reminds me of AS Byatt, who’s one of my all-time favourite writers. You feel the layers in the book, the density. It’s packed with ideas, with observations. And it’s a mystery as well. You want to know what happened. Where is the girl? What happened to her? I’m not going to spoil that.” Read more...
The Best Crime Novels Set in Oxford
Cara Hunter, Novelist
“The book is set in Oxford, at the lodgings of the new Master of one of the colleges. The Master’s Scandinavian wife is busy renovating the house, including whitewashing the floorboards (which I loved, because the dark wood panelling always got me down when I was a student in Oxford). Again, I’m not going to reveal anything, but this book is probably in the domestic noir genre of crime fiction, though at the glamorous end. These are books where I slightly see my own life mirrored—grappling with parenthood and a household, loving work but being over-busy as a result and scared of losing track of what’s important while being over-obsessive about other things.” Read more...
Sophie Roell, Journalist
“That’s what I love about suspense when it’s done well: it’s really powered by oddness and creepiness and things that are just a bit off and unsettling,” author Lucy Atkins told us in her interview on the best classic thrillers. That’s exactly what she achieves in Magpie Lane, a psychological thriller set in Oxford, England.
Many thanks to novelist Adele Geras for bringing Magpie Lane to our attention.
