Fox by Joyce Carol Oates; A Schooling in Murder by Andrew Taylor; Death of a Diplomat by Eliza Reid; Actually, I’m a Murderer by Terry Deary; Can You Solve the Murder? by Antony Johnston
Fox by Joyce Carol Oates (4th Estate, £18.99)
In this hefty, immersive study of gullibility, complicity and betrayal, English teacher Francis Fox is a predator, all the more dangerous for being charming enough to beguile everyone from his adoring pupils to the teachers and parents at Langhorne Academy, the smart New Jersey boarding school where – aided by a change of name – he has obtained a post after leaving his previous job under a cloud. Fox chooses his victims carefully: his “little kittens”, all in his preferred 12-to-14 age group, have literary leanings and absent fathers, and feel validated by the attention he pays them. When the parts of Fox’s body that haven’t been consumed by wildlife are pulled out of a local swamp, it falls to world-weary detective Horace Zwender to work out what’s been going on. Peppered with exclamation marks, breathless and febrile, this is an utterly mesmeric account of how one man’s crimes can affect an entire community.
A Schooling in Murder by Andrew Taylor (Hemlock, £20)
