Guilty by Definition by Susie Dent

This book is set in Oxford (tick); the characters work for the Clarendon English Dictionary which is a thinly disguised Oxford English Dictionary (tick) and has lots of fun with puzzles, cryptic clues and the origins of words (tick).

Susie Dent is well know in the UK for her appearances as a word expert on tv. She peppers the book with tasty tid-bits of information about the origins of words, their uses and such. I found these interesting but a distraction from the mystery that drives the plot: Who is sending the mysterious cryptic postcards, and why? Does it relate to the disappearance of Martha’s sister ten years ago? I think Dent has such an obvious obsession with words and language, she can’t help but share as much of her knowledge as possible, but perhaps a crime novel is not the best place to do so!

Readers of Pip Williams’ wonderful books will recognise many aspects of the editors’ working day, including ‘slips’ – strips of paper submitted by anyone and everyone with suggested words for inclusion in the dictionary.

So, distractions that I enjoyed:

Philobiblist – noun, a lover of books
Conjobble – to eat, drink and talk
Sonder – the realisation that other people have rich and complicated lives that we will never know.
Apparently the word ‘dog’ is one of the ‘biggest etymological mysteries in the language, arriving unannounced in Middle English with no trace of past or ancestry.’
The exclamation mark has been referred to in the past as the boing, sling, bang, gasper, startler, slammer and Christer!

As you can see, I perhaps derived more joy from the distractions than I did from the actual mystery. But I think anyone interested in language and words and Oxford will really enjoy this first novel from Susie Dent.

Reviewed by Gaby Meares
Murder on a Monday Reading Group