Susie Dent's first book is a love story to the English language. We follow Martha, Alex, Zoe and Simon, all lexicographers at the CED dictionary, as they find themselves investigating the mysterious disappearance of Martha's sister, Charlie, a decade prior.

Each word in the text seems to have been precisely weighed and it is a joy to read out loud. Scattered throughout the book and in each chapter heading, are forgotten words and their definitions, like "mathom" (a precious thing, a treasure, a valuable gift) or "apricity (the warmth of the sun on a summer's day). To this are added the letters pertaining to Charlie's disappearance, which present challenges to be solved by literary and language afficionados. The plot seems more of an excuse to present language definitions and puzzles, but the mystery is solved at the end in a way that feels plausible.

A recommended read for fans of Countdown, AS Byatt's Possession, and the English language.

I really enjoyed this first novel from word and language expert Susie Dent. With her expansive knowledge of the written and spoken word, I knew this would be an intriguing and knowledgeable read and it did not disappoint.

Martha Thornhill returns home to Oxford to take a position at the CED - the Clarendon English Dictionary, where her sister once worked. Her older sister disappeared over 10 years ago and no-one knows what has happened to her. Over the years there have been many speculations and many searches, but nothing ever came to light.

When the team receive a strange, befuddling letter from someone named Chorus, they all work out the clues that come from it - all of which lead them to Charlie, Martha's missing sister. After receiving more letters and postcards, the team from the CED - Martha, Alex, Zoe and Simon - meticulously work out each clue, leading them all over Oxfordshire to unravel Charlie's past and to find out what really had happened to her!

I loved the idea of these letters and clues, but my own knowledge of Shakespeare is very limited, so there was no way I could work out what they were! It was great to see how the team solved them all though. I loved the mystery behind what Charlie had found as well and how it could and would shake up everything everyone knew about Shakespeare himself! The motive for the murder was clear, but the murderer was not quite who I was expecting!

This was a great read and I loved all the new words I have discovered through it. I don't think I had used my kindle dictionary so much in one book before, but isn't that what reading is all about - expanding our knowledge and enjoyment of the written word?!

Thank you to Netgalley and Zaffre Books for my ARC copy of this book! Definitely looking forward to more of Susie Dent's mystery thrillers in the future!

Words hide a mystery here.
This book centres around a group of five lexicographers who work compiling dictionaries at a prestigious University Press in Oxford. There is a downbeat atmosphere in the group. The recently appointed head is haunted by the disappearance of her sister a decade before. They start getting. Cryptic clues about the sister which sets the team off on solving the mystery.
This is a 'wordy' book with lots of words from the past appearing, often with their meanings being given. This is to be expected, given Susie Dent's career as a lexicographer and etymologist career in academia and indeed her television role. Some readers may feel that this is a little overdone, but it does give colour to the work that the five do.
This is a well written book with believable characters, she truly is a wordsmith. For me it was an enjoyable read

This novel was a perfect storm for me I have always been a fan of Susie and I love a mystery, particularly a university town based mystery, and add a lexicographical twist and I am sold.

This story centres on Martha Thornhill, still haunted by the disappearance of her talented older sister Charlie ten years ago, and her team of word detectives at the Clarendon English Dictionary in Oxford.

When crossword clue style anonymous letters start arriving at the office hinting at a larger mystery connected to Charlie’s disappearance the team strive to unearth the hidden meaning.

I liked Martha and her team, and thoroughly enjoyed the unfolding of the mystery. I also loved learning some fascinating new (old!) words and their origins ( I would expect nothing less from Susie).

If you are looking for a fast paced, all action thriller this isn’t it, but it is perfect for word and history buffs like me and I loved every minute, I can easily see this becoming a series.

Thank you to Netgalley and Zaffre for the ARC.

Great if you're a fan of cosy crime. I enjoyed the definitions and the use of old words as much as the story..

My thanks to Bonnier Books and NetGalley for a copy of “ Guilty By Definition “ for an honest review.

I really wanted to like this book , because I like Susie Dent , and I like books with a puzzle that make you think , but unfortunately, I just couldn’t connect with this book. It was a little too slow paced, for me ,and of course a lot of the words she used I had to check on the meaning of.
I appreciated the chance to read this in advance of publication though.

I’m sorry to say that I initially struggled a bit with this book and found it a little hard to get into but perhaps it was just not the right time for me to read it as I am in a bit of a book slump however I did enjoy it more as it progressed.
I loved the writing and the many descriptions of a word at the beginning of each chapter. I loved the cryptic type clues in the postcards and letters and although I was useless at solving them I enjoyed trying.
Good writing, great characters and a clever plot and although as I have said I struggled at times I look forward to more from Susie Dent.
My thanks to NetGalley and Bonnier Books UK, Zaffre for giving me the opportunity to read the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Set in an Oxford, described by someone who really loved the place, anyone without knowledge of the town and it’s colleges (namely me) felt excluded from the whole scenario. The characters did not feel contemporary but from another era, with too many stereotypes. It was convenient that they all had areas of specialisation or expertise that allowed them to combine and solve the riddles.
I tried hard to like the story but I’m afraid it didn’t work for me.

Although I am not a fan of “celebrity” authors I thought this one was probably worth the risk. It was a great book and although there were lots of big and unusual words, they were all explained without making the reader feel stupid. The story is great and is basically that of Charlie, Martha’s sister, who disappeared years before. There have always been postcards but when Martha returns from a stint in Berlin, the postcards become more frequent and appear to be pushing the recipients towards solving the mystery of Charlie’s disappearance.

Although I found the book a little slower to read than my normal genres, it didn’t take anything away from it.

Worth a read and some great scrabble words learnt

Martha is the senior editor of the Clarendon English Dictionary along with colleagues Simon, Zoe, and Alex. One day they receive a cryptic letter alluding to the unsolved disappearance of Martha’s sister Charlotte.

The clues in the letters they receive are really clever and are a testament to Suzie Dent’s knowledge and skill as a lexicographer and etymologist. They were really well-crafted and would require a lot of dedication and brain power to decipher (more than I possess). The description of Oxford made me realise that I have to visit it asap!

The core of the mystery really fits in to the theme of the book and each chapter begins with a word and it’s a definition which was a nice touch. However, it did drag on in parts due to verbose descriptions and unnecessary additions of obscure words.

Overall, a fun and interesting cozy mystery that will educate as well as intrigue. 3.5 stars rounded up.

When an anonymous letter is delivered to the Clarendon English Dictionary, it is rapidly clear that this is not the usual lexicographical enquiry. Instead, the letter hints at secrets and lies linked to a particular year.
For Martha Thornhill, the new senior editor, the date can mean only one thing: the summer her brilliant older sister Charlie went missing. After a decade abroad, Martha has returned home to the city whose ancient institutions have long defined her family. Have the ghosts she left behind her been waiting for her return?
When more letters arrive, and Martha and her team pull apart the complex clues within them, the mystery becomes ever more insistent and troubling. It seems Charlie had been keeping a powerful secret, and someone is trying to lead the lexicographers towards the truth. But other forces are no less desperate to keep it well and truly buried.

I really enjoyed this, a good solid mystery with plenty of unusual words thrown in, as you would expect from a team of etymologists working on a dictionary. Great characters whose lives are all not all they seem to be at first. Well plotted and intriguing with cryptic letters to decode and riddles to untangle. I liked the Oxford setting and the way the team worked everything out. Satisfying ending, a great debut and highly recommend.

Wordy and clever mystery but perhaps a bit too wordy for a gripping storyline. Loved the Oxford setting and all the book references, just missing something as a novel.

I love languages and words, their history and meaning and development, so this book seemed right up my street. The plot started off well enough and I did enjoy the letters with their hidden messages. However, it was incredibly slow and seemed to spend a lot of time not going anywhere. Once the plot picked up speed a little, it seemed to end up in quite well-worn and clichéd territory which was a shame.

I felt that the majority of the characters were a bit lacking in substance, particularly Martha. Despite being the main character, her entire personality seemed to be 'sister of Charlie'. There was quite a stereotype to the majority of the rest of the characters though: the bubbly younger woman, the older woman with a scandalous secret, the only male in the team who feels put out by the women getting better job roles, the older male with a thing for younger women... Having said that, I did quite like Zoe and Alex, but the rest of them didn't really grab me.

There was a lot of overuse of long unfamiliar words which just felt so much as though the author had to either show off her knowledge and vocab skills, or that she had a reputation as someone with knowledge and vocab skills so she had to live up to it. Some of them just seemed to be rather crowbarred in.

When it was revealed that there was a missing manuscript with a connection to Shakespeare, I rolled my eyes so hard, I nearly sprained something. I have read several books where there's various people trying to find a previously unknown or lost Shakespeare manuscript, it's seriously overdone. Besides which, the book is set in Oxford. If you need a manuscript from an author with a connection to that city who is well-known for their creation of words, what's wrong with Lewis Carroll?? Now that would be interesting. Or, given the focus on women of words, Vera Britten could be a good choice, or perhaps Dorothy Sayers, especially with her detective series and the exploration of discrimination women faced.

Overall, it wasn't a bad read but it wasn't quite as good as I thought it would be. Many thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for providing me with an advance copy to review.

Such a fun read! It took me a few chapters to get into the characters and the mystery but once I was in I couldn’t wait to unravel more of it.

One of the only things I struggled with was there being lots of explanations through characters explaining things to each other, which is one of my pet peeves in books because it makes the dialogue feel a bit forced.

But I understand there needed to be lots of explanations because I also learned a lot from this book. So many fun new words and I didn’t even know what a commonplace book was properly.

I also wish we’d had slightly more time with the romance, the small snatches we got were very cute!

There were also parts where the switching of perspective was slightly confusing, it was mostly fine and the final print version might be clearer with line breaks or something but in the PDF I read sometimes the perspective shift happened without me noticing and I had to reread a section to understand it properly. As I said I don’t think this will be as much of a problem in the final version though.

I'm a fan of Susie Dent, so when I heard she was publishing a murder mystery, I had to read her debut fiction novel.
Set in contemporary Oxford, Dent's work as an etymologist, is evident from the opening page, and the novel is full of unusual language (terms not in use in common parlance) and linguistic puzzles. This makes the storyline one where the reader must keep their focus on the story carefully, as otherwise it's too easy to miss the puzzles and explanations. And lost the fun of the novel.
As for the storyline, every aspect is tied to the linguistics puzzles and this is a clever novel.

I am a big Susie Dent fan and I love linguistics, cryptic crosswords and Oxford so I was so excited to get an early copy of this book. Straight away I was drawn into the solid group of female friends at the CED. I loved the way in which the clues were written and unfolded and the way all the characters and their lives collided. I also loved the premise of the mystery which I won’t say any more about for obvious reasons. The only reason I have not given five stars is because I felt the way they solved some of the clues was just too quick and a few things fell into place too easily.

I found it incredibly difficult to get into this book, which was really disappointing. It was just bland and felt almost painfully boring. It's such a shame as I love Susie but, for me, this was a complete fail

As you would expect from an etymologist, there is lots of love of language and linguistic puzzles thrown into the mix in this enjoyable mystery novel. All of which puts it a cut above the average fair of the genre and the definite trend for celebrity authored novels.

Be prepared to have your dictionary handy when some words are new to you (this is when a kindle comes in handy although many of them defeated its limited dictionary) but that’s just part of the pleasure of reading it.

Dent manages to bring some pathos as well as erudition - thoroughly enjoyable.

With thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for an arc of this novel.

Martha Thornhill has returned to Oxford after ten years working in Germany. She takes up a position as editor at the CED but when a mysterious cryptic letter arrives at the office, the team soon realise that it refers to Martha's sister, Charlie who disappeared some thirteen years before, the year Martha finished her A levels.
The letter seems to form a series of clues, leading them to different aspects of Charlie's life. It is followed by another letter and another, and gradually they are able to piece together what she was doing in the final months of her life. The story takes us round parts of Oxford and around a lot of Shakespeare too. It is heavy on language which I found interesting but it slowed the pace of the story.
I liked the character of Martha who has felt guilt over her sister's disappearance for all these years and she is ably assisted by Zoe who is a sparky young girl and Alex, an older divorcee who has a secret of her own. Charlie, however, comes across are rather self centred and wrapped up in herself, although perhaps the ending does explain why and the reader can forgive her at least some of selfishness.
This is not a face paced thriller but neither is it cozy crime. It bumbles along quite slowly as the group of colleagues try and work out the literary clues in the letters. In one or two places I wondered if the word knowledge of the author was overwhelming the story somewhat but it makes and excellent and different background to the mystery.
With thanks to Netgalley and Bonnier Books UK for an arc copy in return for an honest review.

I would describe this book as a clever, rather than a gripping read. All of the ingredients for 'cosy' or British rural crime were there, delightful Oxford setting, dodgy dons, dusty bookshops and dictionary obsessives but the characters felt as if they had been marched on to set to say their piece and then off again. Readable, but not absorbing.