Lead Review

• Book: The Maidens
• Location: Cambridge
• Author: Alex Michaelides

Review Author: Tina Hartas

3.75*

This is a modern day mystery, with plenty of literary references and a cast of colourfully drawn characters, all set in the world of academia. Cambridge makes an excellent backdrop with its wonderful architecture, bucolic parts and the weird and archaic traditions that govern university life.

Greek tales and myths very much resonate in present day. A woman’s body is found. Mariana, a former student at the university and now a troubled group therapist (who probably shouldn’t be practising), is convinced that Greek tragedy professor, Edward Fosca, is a murderer – he is an unassailable academic whose influence reaches far and wide. Mariana can’t take her eye off the members of a secret society called The Maidens who seem to idolise him. When another body is found, her fixation goes into overdrive and I found myself palming my forehead!

This novel is quite the gothic psychodrama, with an inventive combination of threads. It is very readable but sometimes gets a little archly derailed as it builds to its conclusion.

Cambridge is the setting. The film, starring Renee Zellweger, will be set in California.

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