The Devil in Oxford: A Ruby Vaughn Mystery

Armstrong crafts a serpentine third historical mystery (after The Secret of the Three Fates) featuring 30-year-old Ruby Vaughn. When Ruby isn’t sleuthing, she lives and works alongside her octogenarian employer, Mr. Owen, at their Exeter bookshop. On the week before Christmas in 1923, Mr. Owen suggests the pair spend the holiday in Oxford, where they can attend the annual meeting of an antiquarian society he belongs to. The group is abuzz about a “cache of Egyptian antiquities stolen by Napoleon himself” that the society is preparing to exhibit. Ruby agrees to come along, but the ceremony takes a horrific turn when the body of a disgraced Oxford professor is found crammed into the stone box that is supposed to house the Egyptian antiquities. Ruby jumps on the case, plunging into a convoluted web of drug trafficking and murder that never quite comes into focus. Armstrong lays the red herrings and potential suspects on thick, and while it’s often entertaining to follow Ruby as she ping-pongs from clue to clue, readers will find themselves wishing for a bit more substance to the plot and Ruby’s characterization. Fans of Armstrong’s previous outings may have fun, but this is unlikely to win her new ones. (Nov.)