Death at the Alma Mater (St. Just Mystery #3) by G.M. Malliet

Death at the Alma Mater (St. Just Mystery #3) Reviews

• 
  Ivonne Rovira

  Just as
  Death of a Cozy Writer sent up the venerable British house mystery,
  G.M. Malliet crafts her latest Detective Inspector St. Just mystery, Death at the Alma Mater as a send-up of
  Gaudy Night. However, Malliet proves more
  M.C. Beaton (in one of her lesser Hamish Macbeth novels) than
  Dorothy L. Sayers.
  
  Most of Malliet's characters -- a notable exception being Portia De'Ath, and even she has a rather twee name -- come across as stock or over the top: the self-less police inspector, his loyal if dim-witted sergeant, the horsey county woman, the posh peer, the gauche Texan; the formidable, tweedy female academic; the bubble-headed TV news presenter, the obnoxious New Yorker, the naïve clergyman -- well, you get the idea. Another drawback is Malliet's tendency to sloppily slip into cliché. For example, when describing a long-suffering scholarship student, Saffron, Malliet writes, "Like her robe, the duvet was threadbare, but it was spotless." After all, aren't all the lower classes plucky and hard-working albeit in rags? Threadbare? Really? Maybe in the age of
  Charles Dickens and rag-and-bone shops. In the age of
  Gillian Flynn and H&M, not so much.
  
  Death at the Alma Mater has a clever ending -- all of Malliet's mysteries do -- but this time it's not enough to make up for the trite writing. The novel's suitable for when readers need a mindless mystery and they haven't any
  Ann Granger,
  Diane Mott Davidson or something else better at hand.
• 
  Laura

  Another funny mystery, though not nearly as good as the previous two. This time the murder takes place at the fictional St. Michael’s College, Cambridge, where the cash-strapped college is hosting a special weekend for rich alumni. Unfortunately, this time the author often goes for easy jokes, the solution is improbable, and — worst of all — there’s an appallingly written American character who occasionally throws cowboy expressions from TV Westerns into snarky, complexly British-sounding sentences. It's as though the author couldn't make the effort to change her voice but every now and then remembered to sound "Texan," which is weird because she's smart and has lived in both England and the US, so why the gross unevenness? I was also a bit irritated because I kept referring to the map of the college at the front of the book to keep track of who was where, and it didn’t matter, so I felt taken in. Or maybe it did matter but I couldn’t figure out how. Not bad, but not great. Certainly not disappointing enough to give up on this series.
• 
  ☺Trish

  I enjoyed much of the mystery set in St. Mike's College at Cambridge, but eventually found the resolution to be just a tad too farfetched, albeit very clever (especially seeing as these were supposed to be all extremely intelligent people).
  I am really looking forward to seeing how Arthur St. Just and Portia De'Ath's relationship progresses. It would be wonderful to have additional info on their backgrounds and to have more of their personal lives and personalities revealed in each new book.
• 
  Bev

  Liked this one better than Death & the Lit Chick. Back on track for G. M. Malliet.
• 
  Paula

  To begin with, I read a lot of mysteries. I try not to waste time on those I believe to be poorly written, and Malliet has always come through in the past with fun, lightweight stories. Not so with this particular selection.
  
  For starters, the internal dialogues of Portia (“how thrillingly macho”) and St Just (“One felt that one had to earn the privilege of seeing that smile”) are just cliched eye-rolls. I want mystery not banal romance. If I read one more platitude about what a chivalrous gentleman St Just is, or how Portia is “held in the highest regard” by everyone, I thought I was going to lose my lunch (how’s that for an easy cliche?) or at the very least toss this one on the DNF pile.
  P and SJ like each other; we get it already - let’s move on to the supposed plot. But at the halfway point, the quality of the writing just continued to plummet. Too many words wasted with the two protagonists mooning over each other in case the reader hadn’t yet got the message.
  
  And of course the Americans came across as uncouth, clueless, bobble-heads.
  
  The solution to the mystery was implausible in the extreme. In all honesty, I can’t believe how much I didn’t like this book. Everything was so stereotyped - really a disappointment. I kept hoping it would get better, but by the end I just read as fast as I could to get it overwith.
  
  Malliet’s Max Tudor series is a much better series than this St Just claptrap. I would not waste time on another, but thankfully she seems to have abandoned this series.
• 
  Kyrie

  Aside from giving a few insights into St. Just, and his relationship with Portia, this one didn't send me.
  
  I found none of the characters likeable. The past relationships seemed silly enough to make the present ones even sillier. I didn't figure out who did it, but I honestly didn't care that Lexy died or who killed her. Finding out who and how was just weird, and well, yeah, didn't much care for this one.
• 
  Renita D'Silva

  Brilliant
• 
  Rachel

  A lovely little English cosy mystery beautifully narrated
• 
  Frances

  Light crime. Easy read.
• 
  Damaskcat

  St Michael's College, Cambridge is getting short of money. The college is holding a reunion weekend with some very carefully selected alumni. They have been selected for their wealth in the hope they will make substantial donations to their alma mater. Then Lexi Laurant, one of the guests is found strangled.
  
  No one seems to have liked her very much including her ex-husband Sir James Basset who is also a guest along with his second wife, India. DCI Arthur St Just must try and unravel the case and work out who could have been in the right place at the right time to commit the murder. His new relationship with Portia De'Ath - a Fellow of the college - looks like taking second place yet again during the investigation.
  
  I enjoyed reading this light hearted mystery set in Cambridge. I could however have done without all the Americanisms since the book is set n Cambridge rather than in the US. They were fine in the speech of the American characters but they did grate on me in the rest of the book. I like St Just and his sidekick - DS Fear as well as Portia. I thought the suspects were a nice collection of mildly eccentric characters, many of them with hidden depths. This is the third book in the St Just mystery series.
• 
  Huw Rhys

  I was looking forward to this book. I'd read a lot of good things about the author, and the setting of this novel really appealed as well.
  
  Often when you have high expectations, disappointment can be a good bet. But this took disappointment to new levels.
  
  To call it formulaic would be a gross insult to formulas. There is a murder, there are a series of interviews with suspects and then a completely banal denouement scene ends this dreadful offering.
  
  There is no characterization, the leading, repetitious characters (this is the third in a series, apparently - rest assured, I shan't be bothering to seek out the other two) are little more than cardboard cutouts, there is no dynamic between any of the characters - it is just a dreadful, dreadful excuse for a novel. I could go on, but it would just be more depressing for me, and what would be the point? Move on, life is too short!
• 
  Joanne

  I like academic mysteries and I like St. Just as a detective. I don't like the farfetched ending -- the means of death here was just silly. Impossible to see coming. Book #1 in this series was pretty far-fetched, too. C'mon, Ms. Malliet, give us a chance.
• 
  Amy

  I really enjoyed the first book. Thought the second was okay. This one started off so disjointedly that I had a very hard time holding my interest. It didn't have the same fun, spoofy feel I loved in the first.
• 
  Megan

  Fun, although nothing but interviews and then a brilliant but hidden insight from our hero is a little too formulaic. Could have used a little more interaction between the hero and his girlfriend or something to break up all the interviewing of suspects.
• 
  Barbara

  
  St. Michael's College, Cambridge, is in desperate need of a cash transfusion, so the school plans a weekend of festivities for wealthy alumnae who are targets for substantial donations. Not long into the weekend, the glamorous Lexi Laurant who came with her Latin American hunk is murdered, and Chief Inspector St. Just is brought in to tackle the case.
  Familiar setup - a mismatched group is gathered - or stranded - together in a relatively isolated locale and one of them is murdered. Unfortunately, none of the characters really stand out, The "who" in the "whodunit" is pretty easy to figure out and the story plods along, rather than escalates.
  One off-putting note were the stereotypical characterizations of the wealthy Texan and the self-absorbed Latin lover. I actually checked the date on the book because these cardboard portraits came off like something written in the 40s. Okay, maybe the author's never been to the US, I get it, but this made the book seem very dated.
• 
  Susan

  It's been a while since I've read a St. Just (and Portia!) book - must dig out Death of a Cozy Writer again. Just ordered the Lit Chick one, since I apparently don't have a copy. This one takes place at Cambridge Univ., during an alumni gathering. Only wealthy alumni are invited, since the whole reason is to get donations. One of them is killed, naturally, and several of the others are suspects, giving St. Just a lot of people to interview.
  I enjoyed it very much, although it took me longer than usual to get through it, for some reason. A lot of characters to keep track of, even though some of them don't do much in the story. I didn't guess the ending, which makes it a really good book for me!
• 
  Aviva

  A classic "whodunit" style mystery with a quick pace, charming characters, but a farfetched resolution. I did not think the detectives learned enough clues to put it all together and have the time to fake someone else's death... But overall, I liked Malliet's writing style and her attention to detail on the surroundings (specifically the university buildings) as well as the characters so I will be sure to check out the other 2 books in the series which I have read have more of a humor element to their storylines.
• 
  Phoebe

  Malliet's third installment in her St. Just series is as well written as ever, this time set in Cambridge at the prestigious and broke St. Michael's College where wealthy alumni have gathered for terrible food, good drinks, and murder. St. Just and his trusty right hand Sergeant Fear must get to the bottom of the crime as they wade through a suspect pool of eccentrics. Atmosphere, writing, and characters, plus a clever solution, make for another great read. St. Just is as charismatic as Father Max, our first favorite. Adult.
• 
  Sarah

  THIS REVIEW CONTAINS A BIG SPOILER
  
  This was a bit of a silly book. I did not realise that this was the third book in a series and having not known that whilst reading, I had assumed it was a young novelist's first book and didn't want to judge harshly.
  
  While other readers have criticised the characters of this book as being cliched, I do think this was intentional by the author, perhaps so that the reader feels familiarity with the characters who are reminiscent of tv crime dramas set in the eccentric worlds of academia and English village greens. However, I felt at times like descriptions were contrived and that the author may have fancied the sound of a particular sentence and so had stuck it in where it wasn't really necessary, making for an unconvincing read at points.
  
  I felt like there was nothing in the book which could have helped the reader to actually try to solve the mystery. Indeed, the big reveal was the sort of thing I might have come up with had I been asked to write a crime novel and given a couple of hours to sort out a plot. The murderer basically created an alibi for himself and confused the time of death for onlookers by pretending to converse with a blow up doll of the victim, jiggling the doll about a bit with his foot to animate it. Had there been a hint at this being the case, it might, MIGHT, have been a forgivable ending, but as there was no way this could have been worked out from the previous chapters, it was just plain daft.
• 
  Shannon

  A usually entertaining book to listen to while packing & cleaning, but I also found it easy for it to become background noise & to miss plot points. There may be something about the voice quality of the narrator that made this easier, which is too bad as I enjoyed the overall story.
  
  Overall, fun mystery, but not overly enthralling.
• 
  Mary Newcomb

  Fundraising is always a serious business, not usually deadly serious. This was an OK book, unraveling the mysterious death of a blond bombshell at former her college during a fundraising weekend. It did a thing I don't care for, which is to solve the mystery with information not available to the readers. Good thing this is seemingly the last in this series.
• 
  Gabrielle David

  Old-fashioned fun
  
  The St Just mysteries have been criticized as wordy, but that is why I enjoy them. They aren’t zippy and the vocabulary isn’t on a third- grade level. Among the echoes I heard in Death at the Alma Mater were some from Dorothy L. Sayers’ Gaudy Night, one of my favorites.
• 
  Verity W

  I didn't love this. Although I liked the setting and the set up, in the end there wasn't enough depth to the mystery or the characters for me to really get my teeth into it. Which is a shame because I like Malliet's other series. Hey ho.