The Scholars by MacKenzie Common

Having enjoyed MacKenzie Common’s previous book, The Six Murders of Daphne St Clair, about a ninety-year-old woman looking back on her life as a serial killer, I was interested in trying her new one, another crime novel this time set at Oxford University. The Scholars follows five students who are awarded Oxford’s coveted Shepherd Scholarship, an award given only to the most exceptional candidates each year, many of whom go on to become world leaders in their fields. This year’s Shepherd Scholars consist of Azelle, a social media influencer from South Africa; Mabel, a young Canadian woman who runs a charity providing clean water to remote villages in India; Hugo, the son of a prominent British politician; and two Americans, Hadley, a history academic who is researching pogroms and riots, and Finn, who is developing an AI grief counselling service. The five students seem to have very little in common and tensions develop within the group almost immediately. When one of them is killed…