Helle & Death
Whodunnit? Newcastle University academic pens murder mystery
Published on: 29 January 2024
Dr Oskar Jensen’s new murder mystery Helle & Death was published this month.
Whodunnit
The whoddunnit takes place in a snowbound Northumbrian mansion, where a university reunion turns deadly.
Dr Jensen, a NUAcT Fellow who is researching the history of song at Newcastle University’s International Centre for Music Studies, said: “While it's quite the change from my usual work, it's been a total joy to turn to crime and write something really gripping. This book is a homage to the great history of detective fiction that manages, I hope, to sneak in a glance at academia between murders.”
Last year, he was one of only six authors shortlisted for the prestigious Wolfson History Prize for his book Vagabonds: Life on the Streets of Nineteenth Century London, which brought Dickensian London vividly to life. It looked at the lives of beggars and thieves, musicians and missionaries, porters and hawkers to sex workers and street criers.
A test of wits
Last year, he was one of only six authors shortlisted for the prestigious Wolfson History Prize for his book Vagabonds: Life on the Streets of Nineteenth Century London, which brought Dickensian London vividly to life. It looked at the lives of beggars and thieves, musicians and missionaries, porters and hawkers to sex workers and street criers.
His new novel centres on Torben Helle — art historian, Danish ex-pat and owner of several excellent Scandinavian jumpers— who finds himself dragged to a remote snowbound Northumbrian mansion for a ten-year reunion with old university friends. At the dinner table their host, a reclusive and irritating tech entrepreneur, makes some shocking revelations. And when these are followed by an apparent suicide, the group faces a test of their wits... and their trust.
Snowed in and cut off, surrounded by enigmatic housekeepers and off-duty police inspectors, not to mention a peculiar last will and testament, suspicion and sarcasm quickly turn to panic. Kept afloat by strong drink and stronger women, Torben must draw upon the skills of his training and all the tricks of Golden Age detectives past. As the temperature drops and the tension mounts, it is up to him to work out how much money it would take to turn one of his old friends into a murderer -before someone else ends up dead.
Dr Jensen added: “Sometimes we undervalue escapism. In this novel, I want to make people think – but also to have as much fun as I've had in the writing. It's a lesson I'm also going to try and apply to my scholarship.”
Helle & Death was published by Viper Books on 18 January.
