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Jan 27, 2017wyenotgo rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
One of the most devious, deceptive novels of crime and vengeance I've read in a very long time. Joanne Harris is well known for her nuanced character development; here she has exceeded herself, presenting two narrators and examining the motivations and personalities of both of them to an astonishing degree while at the same time keeping the reader in the dark about secrets held by each of them. This is quite a trick and she pulls it off brilliantly. Along with a superb murder mystery, there's also something else going on here, a social and societal subtext without which the story could not have been made to work. That subtext is a toxic British class system that engenders such deep resentment on both sides that the arrogant, privileged classes on one hand and the ignorant and brutish beneficiaries of a failed socialist system on the other might as well be two different species that cannot coexist. The agent who sets out to destroy St. Oswald's appears to be a psychopath but is also a product of that vicious and destructive class hatred. The protagonist cannot be content with the mere destruction of the enemy but must achieve its total devastation and disgrace to a degree from which it can never recover. Men whose entire lives have been dedicated to a system of education and who are totally devoted to serving the youth within it must have their reputations utterly destroyed for this agent to feel that the social balance has somehow been restored. Murder is far from being the most heinous crime here.