Was It Murder?

by James Hilton

Book Overview

Murder at School deals with the phenomenon of coincidence by posing the question of how likely it is that two brothers attending the same boarding school meet with two separate accidental deaths-and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0486237745
• ISBN13: 9780486237749
• Release Date: January 1979
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Length: 252 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Hilton channels Christie

From the Dover edition: "Was It Murder?" like "Goodbye Mr. Chips," takes place in that most traditional and confounding of English settings, the public school. Colin Revell, impudent Oxonian and sometime sleuth, returns to his alma mater Oakington to puzzle over a schoolboy's "accidental" death. The accidents multiply in frequency and horror as Colin idly pokes about the Gothic quads, and the tightly modulated suspense ripens with a generous foretaste of Hilton's later acclaimed talent: finely perceived, individual characters, overwhelming atmosphere, and full complement of adventure and romance. From reviewer: I must admit it has been many years since I read this, picking it up because "Random Harvest" and "Lost Horizon" are favorites, and I enjoy mysteries. So, my rating is based mostly on not having a bad feeling about it, but not having a great one, either. P.S. This book was originally released in 1931 under the title "Murder At School" under a pen name of Glen Trevor.

Goodbye, Mr. Revell

As one would expect from the author of Goodbye, Mr. Chips, this detective story (the author's sole) is set in a minor public school (Oakington). The victims are two present-day Oakingtonians, brothers, and one of the masters, and the detective is an old Oakingtonian, Colin Revell, in the mould of Trent and Sheringham. Hilton writes with wit and verve, and his character studies are uniformly excellent, while the false theories he devises show considerable ingenuity and make it a great pity that this was his only work in the genre. As it is, I `guessed' the murderer's identity very early on, but remained entertained until the end.