Joanne Harris is one of those authors I don't tend to seek out because some of her earlier books have a whiff of cosy book-of-the-month about them. But this one is different enough to be intriguing.

It is set in an old-fashioned private school for boys and told from two points of view - Mr Straitley, the near-retirement Latin teacher, and a mysterious figure who has a major grudge against the school and has come up with an elaborate revenge plot. Working out who this person is gives a lot of the fun of reading - but the largely well-drawn characters make you care about the outcome. There is a very macabre loose end which makes this stand out from the usual conventions of the genre too.

Mark deducted for the somewhat heavy-handed chess imagery and the odd names that some of the minor characters seem to have.

Released at the York BookCrossing meetup.

Well written and easy to follow, not so easy to put down. A good twist towards the end that you can pick up if you pay attention which is always good in these kind of books. Certainly different to her other works.

Picked up at the December York Bookcrossing meetup.

Oh, I did like this! As a natural classicist and old fart, I did of course empathise with Straitley. It's a good mystery, although I did guess who our villain was pretty quickly.

SPOILER - Trouble is, I felt Harris fell in love with both her villain and victim, and couldn't bear to kill either of them off. The ending felt a bit soft?

To be released at the January York Bookcrossing meetup.

Since this has been kicking around for a while now, in order to free up some space on the Brigantes OBCZ Bookshelf, I thought I'd move it on to the Ye Olde Starre Inne OBCZ Bookshelf - where hopefully it'll find a new reader...

releasing, as promised...