This debut thriller from Akaroa-based academic Marie Connolly is an old-school whodunnit set in the Mackenzie Country, the kind of mystery our own queen of crime Ngaio Marsh used to write.
Wellington-based criminal psychologist Nellie Prayle is called in to assist the police on what will be her first homicide case after a murder occurs at the University of Canterbury’s Mt John Observatory, Aotearoa’s largest professional research observatory and one of the best locations to examine the southern skies.
“Scandals at the university were not uncommon. But murders, it had to be said, were unusual.”
Prayle happens to be on a break from academia and is in Christchurch, staying in her late mother’s home – and finding the pull of the South Island increasingly strong.
An observatory base is not only an unusual setting for a murder, it turns out that many of the murder suspects are celebrated academics who are in the city to celebrate the observatory’s 50th anniversary.
It’s a community Connolly knows well. Although retired, she has worked at senior levels in government and academia, here and overseas.
She helpfully presents a list of characters on the opening pages, which readers are likely to flick back to often, as sometimes figuring out who is who, and how they’re related to each other, can be difficult. I counted more than eight viable suspects from four countries.
The murder victim is an attractive Canadian professor who was the director of Mt John Observatory. Her appointment had stirred up professional and personal jealousies and Connolly is adept at capturing the competitive nature of academia, the incessant jockeying for career advancement, the various inter-department rivalries, and the often-fragile egos.
Indeed, Prayle, whose love life is nowhere near as accomplished as her crime-solving ability, has dated some of these men until “she tired of the long, repetitive discussions about the organisational structure of the university, the ubiquitous tyranny of administration, and the sad deterioration of academic power”.
Connolly delivers an engaging, cosy mystery. It turns out that even professors and PhD students have their fair share of secrets and dodgy histories. But her protagonist remains somewhat opaque – apart from a few intriguing peeks into her life, the reader never really gets a sense of what makes Prayle tick. Perhaps Connolly is saving that for future books, as this is being marketed as “the first in a murder series”.
Dark Sky: Murder Among the Stars by Marie Connolly (Quentin Wilson, $37.99) is out now.
