Top Ten Tuesday list: Mysteries with an Academic Setting

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.

This week's Top Ten Tuesday topic is a School Freebie (come up with a topic that somehow ties to school/education). I am keeping it simple, a list of my favorite books with a school setting.

And here's my list:

Murder is Academic by Christine Poulson

Poulson set her debut novel at St. Etheldreda's College at Cambridge. Cassandra James is a professor of English, and she finds the head of her department drowned in a pool, surrounded by exam papers. In Murder is Academic, in addition to the college setting, we have plagiarism, séances, and the pressures to publish research. And the characters are well-done and believable. The UK title of this book is Dead Letters. Published in 2002. She has published two more books in this series and three books in the Katie Flanagan series.

The Secret Place by Tana French

This is the fifth book in Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad series. The setting is primarily a girls' boarding school in the suburbs of Dublin. The case is the death of a teenage boy who was found murdered, a year before, on the grounds of the girl's school. The action all takes place in one day. The story is told in alternating narratives. The first narrative is from the point of view of a policeman working on the case. The second narrative (in third person present tense) follows the eight girls, boarders at the school, in the year leading up to the crime. Published in 2014.

Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christie

This novel in the Hercule Poirot series is set primarily at the prestigious Meadowbank School for Girls in England, but the action begins with international intrigue in the fictional country of Ramat. I loved the girls school setting, but the espionage story was a bit too unrealistic for me. Julia Upjohn and Jennifer Sutcliffe, two students at the school, are very good characters, and I liked their letters home which moved the plot along. Julia is clever and notices things, Jennifer is more focused on herself, but together they are a good pair. Published in 1959.

The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths

There are three main characters who share the narration of the story. All three are interesting, with very different points of view on life. Clare is an English teacher at a high school; a close friend at work has been brutally murdered. Harbinder Kaur is a policewoman working on the investigation of the death of Ella Elphick, Clare's friend. Georgia is Clare's fifteen-old-daughter, who is a student at the high school that her mother teaches at.  Some of Clare's sections are told via entries from her diary, which does play an integral part in the story. Published in 2018.

Quoth the Raven by Jane Haddam

Quoth the Raven is the 4th book in a 20-book series about Gregor Demarkian, retired FBI agent, living in Philadelphia. This one is set in rural Pennsylvania at a small college, where Gregor has been invited to give a lecture. Halloween is a major event at the college and there will be the annual lighting of the bonfire the same night. The story takes place in the two days before that event; thus this is the perfect book for fall and the Halloween season. I liked the academic setting, and the mix of students and faculty as characters. Published in 1991.

Publish or Perish by Margot Kinberg

This is the first book in Margot Kinberg's Joel Williams series. The setting is academia: a university in Pennsylvania. I know that the academic setting is a competitive one, although I have no first-hand knowledge of this. Williams is an ex-policeman who now teaches in the university's Department of Criminal Justice. There is a good subplot about a group of students investigating the murder. Published in 2008.

A Killing Spring by Gail Bowen

A Killing Spring is the 5th book in a mystery series about Joanne Kilbourn, a political analyst and university professor who gets involved in criminal investigations. The setting is Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. This story begins as the head of the School of Journalism at the university where Joanne Kilbourn teaches is found dead, in embarrassing circumstances. Then a student in Joanne's class complains of sexual harassment and stops coming to class. Published in 1996. 

The Shortest Day by Jane Langton

This is the 11th book in the Homer Kelly series. This story is set in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Homer and Mary Kelly are teaching a class at Harvard University. This is a quirky and humorous mystery in an academic setting. Mary is participating in the annual Christmas Revels when a young singer in the event dies in an automobile accident. When other deaths follow, Homer resists getting involved, even though he was once a homicide detective. The author illustrated the story with her own pen and ink drawings. Published in 1995.

Last Seen Wearing by Hillary Waugh

The story starts with the disappearance of a young female college freshman, Lowell Mitchell. The college she attends is in Bristol, Massachusetts, a fictional small town near Boston, Massachusetts. She goes missing on a Friday in early March 1950 after attending a morning class. Once the college dean ascertains that she is missing, the police are called in to investigate. The small police department in Bristol has less resources and less men to assign to the case than a big city police force. The press and the public are soon pressuring them for a solution, and Lowell's distraught parents also come to town. Published in 1952.

A Novena for Murder by Sister Carol Anne O'Marie

This is a very cozy mystery starring a nun as an amateur sleuth. Sister Mary Helen has retired at 75 and is sent to Mt. Saint Francis College for Women in San Francisco. Shortly after she arrives the body of a professor at the school is found, following an earthquake. The police blame the wrong person, in Sister Mary Helen's opinion, so it is up to her to find out what happened. The setting in San Francisco is nicely done, and there is an interesting subplot involving Portuguese immigrants who have been helped to enter the US and are now students or workers at the college.