In the Shadow of King's

Gillian Adams #1

by Nora Kelly

Alistair Greenwood, Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, hosts a luncheon at his faultless 17th Century home. Its perfection is marred by the incompatability of the guests and the arrogance of the host. Gillian Adams, an American scholar revisiting the unversity while on sabbatical from Vancouver, finds it distasteful, but she's truly appalled when the eminent Greenwood is gunned down the next day while listening to her lecture. Involved as a witness, she's also hooked into the case by her friendship with Edward Gisborne of the Yard, who had come to hear her and remains to capture Greenwood's killer....
This debut novel, first published in 1983, is polished in its plotting and its prose and beautifully depicts Cambridge, doing for that ""ancient seat of learning what Dorothy L. Sayers did long ago for Oxford in Gaudy Night.""

Genres: Mystery

189 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Nora Kelly is an American-born Canadian mystery writer best known for her Gillian Adams series. She earned degrees from the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University and studied at Cambridge. Kelly won the Arthur Ellis Award for Old Wounds in 1999. Based in Vancouver's Strathcona neighborhood, she is a founding president of City Opera Vancouver and has contributed as an associate producer and librettist. She also authored a history of nursing in Vancouver.

Reviews

[Stef Rozitis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started off enjoying it but the classism, conservatism and ultimately retreat into unacknowledged misogyny (Gillian has to always be more passive and less of an agent than Edward) marred my enjoyment. The puzzle of it also did not so much build to a climax as slowly fizzle out, the murderer was who I'd suspected earliest on, the most logical person to have done it, the reasons for doing it at the time and place that it happened was unexplained and you end up feeling like the author is more interested in the setting (King's college, Cambridge) tha plot or characters.

I did love part of Bee's story and how it was portrayed as redemptive. I also didn't completely hate Edward, he is a bit of a stuffed shirt but at least he appreciates Gillian and mostly treats her OK- how she escaped being considered a suspect is hard to understand).

It was enjoyable for some of the book, but it could have been a good deal better still. Perhaps for the 80s this passes as feminism.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not sure why the hardcover edition says 0 pages, but I read the library version. Evidently, this was the first in a series featuring Gillian Adams, who is back in Cambridge for a year-long sabbatical, kicked off by a lecture she's giving. The day prior to her lecture, she's at a luncheon, where the host gets shot at (narrow miss); at the lecture, however, he gets shot and it's spot-on. Fortuitously, Gillian's boyfriend is in attendance and he's a Scotland Yard detective, so he grabs the case and picks her brain for suspects. Dragged a bit, though I found Kelly's descriptive style intriguing.

[Katherine]

Kelly does with Cambridge what Sayers did with Oxford in Gaudy Night; a lot of this is a love song to Cambridge, but with critiques, too. Lots of little homages to Sayers. Professor Gillian Adams, on sabbatical from her university in Vancouver, returns to Cambridge University to give a talk; an eminent but misogynistic scholar is killed, and Gillian’s lover from Scotland Yard helps out the investigation.

[Kathy Chapman]

Not bad. Author is quite enchanted with lots of description!