The Devil in Oxford by Jess Armstrong

Where to find this book at Reed Memorial Library:

• New Fiction
• Call number: FIC Armstrong
• View it on our catalog

With the impending snowstorm, just like you, I grabbed a few books off the shelves in case we got really snowed in. The snowstorm and this book did not disappoint. A solid historical mystery, The Devil in Oxford was a great weekend read.

The book opens in England, a few years after the Great War. Ruby Vaughn is an orphaned heiress and served as a nurse in the war. Postwar, she is working for Mr. Owen, who deals in antiquarian books and dabbles in all things historical. She’s also stumbled into solving mysteries. When a disgraced historical scholar is murdered on the opening night of his Egyptian artifact exhibition, of course Ruby is drawn into the investigation.

A few chapters in, I suspected that this book is part of a series and that I was reading them out of order. I checked the dust jacket and yes, The Devil in Oxford is book three in the Ruby Vaughn mystery series. In no way did this detract from the plot or the narrative. The author simply refers to past history with enough detail that you can intuit what probably happened in books one and two. The archaeological details are interesting and the author freely acknowledges that this is part of the era of British grave robbing and stealing other countries’ cultural artifacts.

The mystery takes some unexpected twists and turns and keeps you guessing. When cocaine use and smuggling joined the plotline, I was a little skeptical whether that was actually going on. After a little research, I found that this was accurate. Indeed, cocaine use and smuggling spiked in postwar Europe.

If you like historical fiction, you’ll enjoy this book. If you like mysteries, you will like it, too. There’s a bit of romance thrown in, too, so techinically it fits into three genres. All in all, The Devil in Oxford is a good, solid read. Not that I’m wishing another snowstorm on us, but I might even hunt up books one and two of the Ruby Vaughn mysteries soon.

You can enjoy The Devil in Oxford as an e-book, audiobook, and hardback.

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