Synopsis of plot seemed interesting, but not my style. ( )

Novelist and one-time librarian, Kate Ivory, has been asked to do some cataloguing at the Bodleian Library, Oxford in an undercover effort to find out how to make rare books disappear when they are in the process of being added to the computer catalogue and removed from the card index. Not only did she discover major losses and what became of the books, but someone else had the same suspicion and came to a nasty end. The book theft is referred to as the Oxford Exit. This was a lot of fun, not a cozy, but kept light with Stallwood's humour and library lore. And of course the setting is first-rate.

Most noteworthy: a particularly creepy character has the name of Vivian. ( )

As I grow older, I find that an increasingly large proportion of my reading matter seems to be crime fiction, and I am always eagerly looking out for engaging new protagonists. Veronica Stallwood certainly seems to have delivered the goods in Kate Ivory (with a hint of metafiction, as the character is herself a novelist). The novels are set in Oxford, too, which is always a boon as far as I am concerned. That makes me all the more surprised that I hadn’t read these books, set and published in the 1990s, earlier.

I first encountered Kate Ivory in [Death and the Oxford Box], in which her participation in a scheme to help a friend recover some property from her estranged husband led to her involvement in the investigation of a brutal murder. Kate emerged from that with flying colours, and I was glad to take up with her again. In this book, she has been asked by her rather oleaginous former semi-boyfriend (the relationship is absolutely ripe for inclusion in what Facebook used to cover with, ‘It’s complicated’) to help investigate the apparent theft of valuable books from the libraries of various colleges and other august institutions around Oxford. As she sets about her explorations, she learns that an assistant employed at one of the libraries involved had been killed, with her unsolved murder deemed by one and all to have been the dreadful but random act of a lunatic. As Kate’s investigations into the book disappearances continue, she comes to suspect that the murder may be connected. This is a novel very much of its time, and the details that the writer and Kate provide about the databases being used now seem quaintly archaic. Fortunately, they do not intrude to any extent that detracts from the joy of the novel.

Stallwood writes with an enjoyably light touch, and as a character Kate is a very likeable (although a large proportion of the people whom she encounters throughout the book find it surprisingly easy to dislike her). For once in a novel set so determinedly in Oxford, academic life is largely excluded, and this is a welcome approach. From the very nature of her investigation, Kate cannot avoid some involvement with the gown, but she is very much on the side of the town.

To offer much more in the way of synopsis would be to risk strewing inadvertent spoilers, which I am reluctant to do. The plot is well devised, and advances through the medium of a journal written by the criminal. This is a familiar literary device, and can sometimes seem too contrived, but in this instance is given the twist of showing different literary styles, as its writer is attending a creative writing course, and adapts their style to reflect the steer of the latest tutorial. ( )

I love this book. This was my introduction to Kate and the Oxford series. Fast paced, interesting and a wonderful setting for all literature lovers. ( )

This book is very interesting if you work in a library or want to visit a time when libraries were transitioning to newer technology (some still are). The mystery itself is interesting in the way we already know how/why the murderer did it and what shaped them early on, just (and more importantly) not who the perpetrator is. Veronica Stallwood deals deftly with the psychological reasons for murder, and honestly it did leave me squirmy at the end...you’ll have to read it to understand. ( )