Nine Lessons

Another intelligent murder mystery from Nicola Upson, featuring the real-life writer Josephine Tey, this ninth story focuses not only on a series of murders being committed in the city of Cambridge, but also a series of brutal rapes on young women in the area. Josephine moves to Cambridge to house-sit for her lover Marta (who is visiting America), when a young nurse living next door is raped - and the young nurse is not the first woman in the area to have been attacked. Whilst Josephine becomes involved with trying to discover the identity of the rapist she is also tasked by her very close friend, Chief Inspector Archie Penrose, to help him solve a series of particularly gruesome murders which somehow seem to be linked to the ghost stories of King's College Provost M.R. James. And if all this is not enough, Josephine also becomes party to a secret that is being kept from Archie - a life-changing secret, but one which Josephine has promised, for the time being and against her better judgement, to keep to herself...As always, Nicola Upson writes evocatively of the time in which she has set her novel, and she has also researched well the attitude of many people at that time towards woman who have been raped and of the shame felt by these women; in addition, Ms Upson looks further at how same sex relationships were regarded by certain people during the 1930s. I have to say that for this particular book I didn't guess either the identity of the murderer or the rapist - which made this story all the more interesting for me and I'm looking forward to the next novel in the series: 'Sorry for the Dead'.4 Stars.

I was hooked right from the start with the shocking and hideous discovery of the first body in a graveyard and from thereon was on the edge of my seat throughout this very cleverly crafted thriller. I had eagerly awaited this 7th book in the superlative series featuring Josephine Tey as an amateur sleuth aiding her friend Chief Inspector Archie Penrose and it exceeded my already high expectations. We are mostly in 1937 in Cambridge in the lead up to Christmas and the town is full of fear as young women are being attacked. This is a situation a great many of us are familiar with from the 1970's during the time that Peter Cook the Cambridge rapist terrorised women for some time until his arrest in 1975. Nicola Upson has skillfully risen to the occasion once again creating not just one murder mystery but also a an intricately constructed plot in which other mysteries and also the complexities of personal relationships run through the novel.

Nine Lessons is the seventh in this series but the first one I have read. Having said that, jumping in partway through didn’t impact on my enjoyment at all and this can easily be read on its own without prior knowledge and loss of enjoyment.Set in 1937, there are actually two mysteries here to be solved. One is a series of murders beginning in Hampstead, London, with the particularly cruel killing of a church pianist being investigated by DCI Archie Penrose of New Scotland Yard and another in Cambridge, where a brutal rapist is attacking single women in their homes.There is clearly a backstory with Archie and his current on/off lover Bridget and a former love interest, writer and playwright, Josephine Tey. Josephine is now living (or more correctly, house sitting as Marta is temporarily in the US) in Cambridge with her lover Marta, however she and Archie have retained a friendship which both find beneficial especially when it comes to helping Archie with his current case with Josephine acting as an amateur sleuth. When the rapist strikes close to home, Josephine gets more closely involved, whilst Archie finds that the trail of his murders takes him to the Cambridgeshire/Norfolk fens where he must find the connection between the murders before the killer strikes again.I thought the two main characters of Josephine and Archie were superbly drawn with both having depth and that likeability factor. Josephine is a very strong character and is infuriated by the attitudes shown towards women during the rapist attacks. Initially there were some in the police that were not even taking the attacks seriously, even though some women were being seriously injured.Although this is Josephine’s series, it was actually Archie Penrose who stood out for me in this story. From being injured during service in WW1, he had risen through the ranks to become a Detective Chief Inspector and suited that role extremely well. He was compassionate and thoughtful, and unlike some of his fellow officers, treated people with respect. It was an extremely complex case to try to solve, made all the more difficult by the timescale involved of some 20+ years and involving some people now in high profile positions, who were not keen on co-operating. Further, he had to do so without the advantage of any modern day policing methods like DNA testing, databases or sophisticated scene of crime investigation equipment.Nine Lessons comprises a satisfying chilling and complex plot, the darkness of the murders being lightened with the occasional touch of humour from its main characters – I particularly enjoyed the interactions between Josephine and the awful cleaning lady and was cheering Josephine on at the end! There is also a personal dilemma involved for certain parties which has an impact on the story. I loved the Cambridge setting which was evocative and atmospheric. Having recently visited the city, I could easily visualise some of the landmarks referred to.This was a thoroughly enjoyable read which combines real life characters and events into a fictionalised story. On checking my booklist I do also have the first book in the series but I shall also now be buying the others. I do also want to read the next book when its published – I don’t know whether Archie Penrose features in this too, I do hope so as I would like there to be more of a continuation of his story.

Nicola Upson presents her readers with glorious plots, book after book. Her ingenuity brings to her reinvention of Josephine Tey, one of the golden era crime writers of the 1930s to 1950s, as a fictionalised protagonist of her own crime stories, fresh and layered originality every time. Set in 1930s Cambridge (the real Josephine Tey's time), Nine Lessons, named for the famous choral Christmas Eve service from King's College Chapel, is a multi-faceted crime novel, rigorously plotted with a double plait of two sets of crimes. The first is a series of clever - and grisly - murders all linked to a long-past event which is in turn linked to the Kings College Chapel Christmas Eve Nine Lessons and Carols Service, which in turn again, is linked to a real-life storyteller, M.R. James, who died in 1936. James wrote ghost stories which he apparently read to selected guests on Christmas Eve. In Nicola Upson's tale, the murders are directly connected to one particular Christmas Eve in 1913. Therefore the majority of the novel is set in Cambridge, a city to which Josephine Tey comes to share a house with her lover, screen-writer Marta (currently in the USA discussing a film script for Alfred Hitchcock - a nod to Upson's previous novel 'Fear in the Sunlight'). Alongside the serial murders there is a current crime wave tearing Cambridge apart - a series of assaults on single women, alone in their flats. (This theme is loosely based on the wave of the Cambridge rapist assaults that swept through Cambridge in 1970.) Weaving the two strands of crimes together, Josephine Tey and her close friend, Detective Inspector Archie Penrose (supposedly the model for Alan Grant in Tey's own crime stories), are led on a compelling quest for answers. Tey gets mixed up with one of the assaulted girls; Tey's and Penrose's personal stories get caught up with the Cambridge events. The complicated but neatly and seamlessly woven plot-lines keep the reader fascinated. Fiction on fiction, this is a compelling crime novel and Upson at her best.

A really good read. I am new to this author and only noticed her after a very interesting interview with her on BBC4's 'Meet the Author'. After reading this book I am now well and truly a fan and have downloaded all the first six books in this series onto my kindle for holiday reading. The book 'Nine Lessons' is beautifully written and all the descriptions are good enough to conjure up pictures, but not over the top or tedious as a lot of fiction books can be. The descriptions of 1930's Cambridge are particularly evocative of the town and the period. This author is very insightful and emphatic. Her characters are finely drawn and most, particularly the main characters, are people you can easily like. This makes it interesting to read and a joy to read and it is one of those books that you are loath to put down. There is also clear evidence that the author has done some good research. I like, for example, her portrayal of certain attitudes towards rape in this period as it was more often than not, especially by the police, seen as a minor crime with no idea of the trauma it creates and the lasting damage it leaves behind it. There is not just depth to her characters, but depth to the story lines which weave in and out of the book so easily making it easy to read, but not detracting from the fact that this is clever writing.I am very eager to read her other books on the Josephine Tey character, but I would recommend that you read them in order which unfortunately, as I started from this seventh volume, I did not. However this book could stand alone, only a few times was I a little confused by not knowing the characters before and I soon worked it all out and it is better that the author did not feel it necessary to continually remind readers of the previous story lines. They were only mentioned when necessary to this particular book thus avoiding repetition which is not a good trait in an author.