Oxford Blood

Jemima Shore #5

by Antonia Fraser

Spine creased, page edges tanned, owner's inscription. Orders received by 3pm Sent from the UK that weekday.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, British Literature

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Antonia Fraser is the author of many widely acclaimed historical works, including the biographies Mary, Queen of Scots (a 40th anniversary edition was published in May 2009), Cromwell: Our Chief of Men, King Charles II and The Gunpowder Plot (CWA Non-Fiction Gold Dagger; St Louis Literary Award). She has written five highly praised books which focus on women in history, The Weaker Vessel: Women's Lot in Seventeenth Century Britain (Wolfson Award for History, 1984), The Warrior Queens: Boadecia's Chariot, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Marie Antoinette: The Journey (Franco-British Literary Prize 2001), which was made into a film by Sofia Coppola in 2006 and most recently Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King. She was awarded the Norton Medlicott Medal by the Historical Association in 2000. Antonia Fraser was made DBE in 2011 for her services to literature. Her most recent book is Must You Go?, celebrating her life with Harold Pinter, who died on Christmas Eve 2008. She lives in London.

Reviews

[BlackOxford · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bloody Awful

Antonia Fraser is a person for whom silver spoons were invented. So I suppose her fictional work must be about the privileged media luvvies who feasibly share her background. Characters named Jemima, Cy, Cass are giveaways. The little white Mercedes sports car fills out the picture. Locations like Holland Park and Oxford let the reader know what sort of people these are; they’re of course people like her. One must write about what one knows, mustn’t one?

Do the rich not bleed? Of course they do. And they have secrets like everyone else that they’d rather not be made public. Their wealth and position of course are the only reason anyone would find their secrets even remotely interesting. That’s what sells newspapers (the book was written in those ancient times before the web and DNA testing). And presumably they were expected to be the reasons people would buy Fraser’s book.

I can’t think of any other reason to invest one’s time in Oxford Blood other than as an unintentionally ironic guide to English upper class mores and speech patterns. There’s little else in it worth bothering about. The premise of a dead baby swapped for a living one in order to continue a noble family line is trite as well as absurd. The contradiction of action and intention is all too obvious. The premise might serve (just) as the foundation for an episode of Midsomer Murders. But it’s more likely that it wouldn’t make it past the first script-editing conference.

The baby in question has grown by late adolescence into a Boris Johnson-like japester on the razzle in The Oxford Bloods, a rough imitation of the Bullingdon Club, an association of rich knob-heads who wreak drunken havoc in only the best Oxford eating establishments and rate the success of their nights out by the size of the bill for damages. Think Brideshead Revisited but without the restraining influence of old-fashioned college porters and limited family allowances. Others may quarrel with my taste, but it has never been my ambition - literary or otherwise - to know much about such people. To be aware that they exist as symbols of inherited privilege and intensive inbreeding is more than enough.

I suppose that England needs these genetic remnants of the Norman Conquest. They do provide comic relief during times of national crisis. Eccentricity, however, sails perilously close to buffoonery. One might ask why the Lady Antonia would write about such drivel. The answer, I think, is simply that she can, and therefore does. Lots of similar folk are there for encouragement and support. No mystery about that.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

"In this tale the elegant reporter is reluctantly shooting a TV exposé — "Golden Lads and Girls" — on the exotic lifestyles of overprivileged undergraduates. Among them is Lord Saffron, the wealthy, twenty-year-old heir to the former foreign secretary. When a confession by a dying midwife throws Saffron's birth and bloodline into doubt, Jemima's interest in the documentary perks up considerably. Then a student is murdered, drawing her into a case that will demand the utmost of her detective skills."
~~back cover

A bit better than the others I read in this series. Less gratuitous sex, which is a relief. Clever plotting, with the usual confusion and dazzle which seem to follow Jemima around.

[Kathleen (itpdx) · Rating 1 out of 5]

Less than average mystery. I never felt I got to know any of the characters. Written in 1985: no cell phones, no caller ID and no DNA testing.

[María · Rating 1 out of 5]

It is kind of annoying, but I am a sucker for these british myestery writers! Why are there so many of them?

[Alexandra · Rating 1 out of 5]

i found it quite boring

[Rhiannon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Forced and stilted style, flat characters, and uninteresting plot. I was very disappointed and had to force myself to finish the book.

[Cheryl · Rating 2 out of 5]

A quick read, not one I will repeat.

[Tom · Rating 1 out of 5]

That was the most boring book I've read about rich drug addicted college kids being murdered.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

I do like the Jemima Shore mysteries and Antonia Fraser's cool elegant style. Perfect for curling up with on a snowy afternoon. Also, a busy body nun, if you like that kind of thing.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad read for 1985. Jemima Shore is definitely part of a culture different from my
West Coast US. Would have liked a little more Oxford detail.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in February 1999.

Jemima Shaw is an investigative TV journalist, who is the heroine of several crime novels by Antonia Fraser. The investigative reporter guise is an excellent one for an amateur detective, for it provides a plausible reason for her to get mixed up in mysterious goings on. However, Fraser avoids the problems that would follow from too much verisimilitude, for Jemima Shaw lacks the large number of researchers to be expected in the team around the star of a programme as important as the one she is supposedly making; she is thus rather more of a loner. (Her programme is, I think, rather like the BBC's Everyman, if slightly more tabloid.)

Two investigations are joined together by Jemima - avoiding the use of unlikely co-incidence on Fraser's part through this manipulation of the plot. An elderly lady in a hospice asks her to visit; a former midwife, she was present at the birth of Lord Saffron, heir to one of the richest inheritances in the country. But what she has to tell Jemima, as an act of contrition, is that she connived at the replacement of a baby which died soon after birth with another, adopted baby boy; Lord Saffron is not really who everyone supposes him to be.

The other is a programme idea which is pretty much forced upon Jemima by the chairman of Megalith Productions, which makes her series. This is to do a profile of rich, young aristocrats, with their golden lifestyle. Prompted by a half-remembered quotation from Cymbeline, he wants it to be called Golden Lads and Girls, ignoring the unpropitious next line about turning to ashes. The title is changed to Golden Kids when someone suggests the original idea may be open to a charge of sexism.

Jemima begins such a programme, deciding to investigate the other matter at the same time by centring it round Lord Saffron, currently an Oxford undergraduate. When his next-door neighbour in college is killed, her investigation takes on a more sombre tone.

Oxford Blood is an extremely well done detective novel, with convincing central characters.

[False · Rating 2 out of 5]

I saw a recent article in Crime Reads that listed potentially good mysteries set in Oxford (beyond the major list I already have of Sayers, Colin Dexter, etc.) The first I read a few pages and sent back as it a lesbian oriented crime book with a lot of descriptive passages about relationships and zero plot by the time I gave up on it. The second, "Oxford Blood" was written by an author I respect, but the book did nothing for me, despite the setting. I've been spoiled by "Gaudy Nights" and "Inspectors Morse and Lewis."

Sorry, Jemima Shore just doesn't appeal to me. Spoiled, precious and promiscuous, Jemima and the other characters are people I would not like to meet. Why in the world would a woman of Jemima's wealth and charm have sex with some really disgusting men? This book is not educational, entertaining, escapist, elucidating or enlightening. There is no reason to read it unless you are stuck at home in a blizzard and have nothing else to read. And if I was stuck at home in a blizzard? I'd re-read Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.

[Susan Olds · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're like me and throw down those poorly-written mysteries, Antonia Fraser is for you! She also writes non-fiction but I love her mysteries. Be prepared to have your dictionary handy- she doesn't write to the lowest common denominator! Good stories and narrative style too.

[Carolyne Peery · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of a serie of mysteries with Jemima Shore as the detective. A short mystery with a little English history, custom thrown in.

[Cws]

M Fra

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining and likeable for its English quintescence. I liked the telling of a tennis match to observe the interaction between the different characters.

[Iris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written as all of her books are.

[Idiellana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jemima Shore book. Fair read.

[Kimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still to much going on that needed x it stops it being an exciting thrilling read xx I did work out the ending x ms shore is a lil but if a slut lol but best one of series so far x

[Laura Doehring]

I was drawn to the idea of reading a mystery written in 1985, set among the beautiful “Golden lads and girls” of Oxford. I would have found it appealing when I was younger and if I had read it when it was released and as a follow on after watching, and reading, Brideshead Revisited.

However, I am less receptive now to the antics of overprivileged youth in a location that hosted Cameron and Boris Johnston and their Bullingdon cronies.

I don’t like the way Fraser characterizes some of the female characters - the way she is demeaning and patronizing towards women who are in subordinate positions to her main character, Jemima.

As for Tiggie, don’t get me started! A tiny, infantile 24-year old, who can wrap men around her little finger and has her own self interest at heart. I think we are supposed to be enchanted by this sprite of a woman, but I found her intensely irritating. Maybe Fraser was going for a recreation of a Nancy Mitford character like Northey, in “Don’t Tell Alfred”, but I don’t think it works at all.

[Carolyn Cash · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book during the 1980s after watching the TV show, Jemima Shore Investigates and read it again after so many years.

Jemima Shore is sent to Oxford to make a documentary called Golden Kids focusing on the lives of over-privileged undergraduates known as the 'Oxford Bloods', which she calls a 'post-Brideshead situation'.

Her boss Cy Fredericks believes it will make excellent viewing, cashing in on the hit TV drama, Brideshead Revisited.

However, she uncovers a mystery about Saffron, the Marquis of St Ives' handsome and disreputable heir, following a deathbed confession and attempts on his life.

Spoilt rich kids, sex, drugs, envy, incest and inheritance issues, and the murderer is someone you least expect ...

A great read which will keep you guessing until the end.

[MargCal · Rating 1 out of 5]

1 ☆
Finished reading … Oxford Blood / Antonia Fraser ... 16 October 2020
Series: Jemima Shore, #5
ISBN: 0749302399 … 224 pp.

Set in Oxford, peopled by the entitled in their own little bubble. Wealth, power, inheritance, jealousy. I didn't find an attractive, compelling, or sympathetic character amongst the lot of them. So I didn't care about their convoluted relationships nor why one should want another dead. Whodunit? Who cares. Whatever.
Not recommended.

[Jeff Lewis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jemima Shore is making a documentary of the wealthy Oxford students at play but instead comes a cross a murder. I read this nearly thirty five years ago and reading it again I found it a little underwhelming with characters you wouldn't want to spend anytime with.

[AM · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too arch for me.

[Denise Goodkey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was pretty well engaged throughout but, as is often the case with murder mysteries, the villain seems to just suddenly be revealed out of the blue. This is very unsatisfying

[Jason Green · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oxford Blood is the fifth book in the Jemima Shore Investigates series by Antonia Fraser. In this entry, Jemima is pressured by her boss to investigate the antics of a group of privileged students at Oxford University for a TV programme; he believes the recent ratings success of ‘Brideshead Revisited’ has created a public appetite for this sort of thing. (Oxford Blood is set in 1985, with references to Princess Di and the SDP.) Lord Saffron St Ives is at the centre of this group, a dashing aristo who has become a public hate figure for his arrogance and reckless lifestyle. Initially unkeen, Jemima’s interest is piqued by both the deathbed confession of an old retainer of the St Ives family that Saffron is actually a changeling, swapped at birth to preserve the dynastic bloodline - and the family fortune - and by Saffron’s admission that he has been the victim of a couple of recent unsuccessful attempts on his life. Jemima begins to investigate…

Oxford Blood illustrates Fraser’s familiarity with Oxford University and its arcane rituals, academic rivalries and class divisions. It’s an interesting and entertaining background rich with motives for murder, and draws on themes of blood ties, family tensions, the sins of the past, money and class. The Oxford Bloods are a notorious Bullingdon-style ‘dining club’. There’s a gammon-faced Nigel Farage-like character with strident public views on race and immigration (perhaps given the time period Enoch Powell might be a more appropriate comparison). And the shambolic figure of ‘Proffy’ whose large brood of tow-headed children and chaotic north Oxford household bears perhaps more than a passing resemblance to Fraser’s own upbringing as the child of an Oxford don (Fraser was the eldest of eight and lived on Chadlington Road in north Oxford - Proffy lives at the fictitious north Oxford address of Chillington Road).

There are some mild narrative and character implausibilities and perhaps an underwhelming motive for the murders. There’s also the question to be asked if Jemima Shore’s renowned instinct is quite as astute as it’s supposed to be. But overall, Oxford Blood is an enjoyable, lightly-written diversion.

As a sidebar, it’s interesting to note that a year after this book’s publication, the death of Oxford student and Tory Cabinet Minister’s daughter Olivia Channon from the effects of drinks & drugs at a college party mirrors the death of one of the book’s characters. This incident exposed to glaring censorious public light the lifestyles of such privileged and seemingly careless elite during economically turbulent times depicted presciently (?) in Oxford Blood.

[Ann Aldrich · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring. No plot. Little action. Dull. Boring.

[Tali Avishay · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is compelling, but one thing is really annoying: a lot of the plot depends on blood types, and from what I learned in biology, several of the statements about blood types are wrong. For instance, the expert says "...you can't have a B group parent, without having something of B in the child, be it AB or I suppose OB." But actually, if the parent with a B type blood has a genotype of BO (which means he has B type blood, but both B and O genes), and the other parent has O type blood, the child can have O type blood; If the other parent is A, the child can be A. This is just one of several misstatements about blood-types in the book. It is unfortunate, given that blood-types play a major role in the book, but fortunately, the conclusion is not affected by the mistakes. I just wonder who did (or didn't bother to do) the research for the book.