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"It’s like the fates are conspiring against you or something…"
The last few months have been the worst of James Connor’s life. Depressed, failing his degree, and hating his part-time job, our reluctant protagonist is facing the fate all students fear. But the book sets familiar themes, such as porter problems and grubby kitchens, alongside other, more unfamiliar ones.
Something is rotten in the sleepy city of Cambridge. When James’s housemate offers him a new and untested drug for his depression, he begins to hear beautiful music. And suddenly, the Olympian Gods are holding council in the hippocampus of his brain. (The moral of the story? Never accept strange substances from housemates.) The Gods are very, very angry. As it turns out, there is something more sinister lurking behind the decision to fail James’s undergraduate thesis. Robert Clear’s The Cambridge List follows ‘the world’s least menacing serial killer on his awkwardly murderous journey, where ancient rituals, scheming academics and divine politics collide.’
The Cambridge Classicists of Midsummer College have incurred the wrath of the mythological gods. Student-turned-serial killer James, the unlikely vessel of that wrath, must follow their hit-list to take each one down. But with nosy journalists and media crews soon on his case, he will find himself stumbling across something much bigger about fraud and financial embezzlement. In his mind, foul-mouthed goddesses wage divine slanging matches with one another. A fiery Hera, Queen of the Gods, squabbles with her nemesis Aphrodite the Goddess of Desire. And a lustful Dionysus meanwhile has his sights set on James himself.
You’ve got to admire the author’s determination. Robert Clear is self-published, having taken entrepreneurial advantage of all the formats of indie publishing available. With a master’s degree in classics, he is currently finishing a PhD on Ancient Greek literature. His language can be quirky and original. The Muse, Zeus’s daughter and also James’s love interest, has hair ‘highlighted to the point of wickedness.’ The book re-imagines the spire- and turret-topped city of Cambridge as a ‘cut-and-thrust world.’ But it isn’t for the faint-hearted. It is, at times, gratuitously lurid. Some of its scenes are too grotesque, and there is an excessive amount of sordid sleaze.
The book promises a dark comedy with a supernatural twist amidst the ivory towers of Cambridge University. It’s an imaginative idea, but one that is perhaps too stretched out over 345 pages. The structure of the book and repetitive murders means the story begins to stall. Characters become vivid but unlikeable caricatures, whilst the murders themselves become slapstick. The Cambridge List has ambition, selling itself on its similarity to Roald Dahl or Stephen Fry. But the endless intrigues of the Gods become a little tiring, and it is difficult to warm to James himself. Author Robert Clear is now currently working on the sequel.
Energetically written, and with a certain kind of flair, The Cambridge List is bold, bonkers, and perhaps a little too ambitious.
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