Aspire to Die

An Oxford Murder Mystery (Bridget Hart Series, Book 1)

De: M S Morris

Narrado por: Esther Wane

Lust. Ambition. Murder.

When a beautiful, wealthy student is found dead in her room in Oxford's most prestigious college, Detective Inspector Bridget Hart is called to investigate. The murdered girl appeared to have no enemies, yet was killed in a brutal and bloody assault.

Haunted and driven by her own personal tragedy, newly promoted DI Bridget Hart has a lot to prove as she leads her first murder case. Her investigation uncovers a tangled web of lies, lust and ambition, and brings her into conflict with powerful interests.

But no one can be above suspicion within the closed and claustrophobic confines of an Oxford college, where students and academics live and work side by side, and a ruthless killer waits to strike again.

©2019 Margarita Morris and Steve Morris (P)2020 Tantor

"Lust and ambition."

"Oxford was a strange place."
Lead detective D.I.Bridget Hart might live and work in Oxfordshire, even attended university in Oxford, and enjoys Italian opera in her car, but Inspector Morse she is not. Instead she is the rather trite dowdy single mother of a teenage daughter, sister to an unsolved murdered girl when she was teenaged and, despite always unapologetically leaving him in the lurch, mysteriously very attractive to an art gallery owner with whom her efficient sister wanted to match her. And Aspire to Die is the story of her first lead case, a police procedural of fairly incompetent floundering and self recrimination.
Though the plot lurches from one suspect to another, Oxford itself provides the enduring and intriguing background and the reader is treated to a comprehensive glimpse of some of the less than tourist aspects of the City as well as the beauty, standing in solid contrast to the people inhabiting it.

The characterisation is insipid and the plot lurches from one obvious suspect to another, and it is further not helped by the narration. Esther Wane has the pleasant sounding clipped English voice so beloved by classic children story presenters, clear, well articulated with certain words stressed for emphasis, but soulless, sounding dismissive and not really invested in what is being read. Plus, unforgivably, in a book so carried by it's setting, she fails to correctly pronounce some place names, such as St.Ebbes, known as St.Ebbs, is here given as St.Eebase, and Osney (Ohznee) becomes Ossni. Small differences, perhaps, but when the City itself is such a large part of the story, quite unforgivable.

Having lived in the city of Dreaming Spires for close on forty years, and married to a native, I enjoy books with an Oxford setting. This was not one of the best, but is readable - from a print version, preferably

Solid police procedural

I liked this first book as I enjoy police procedurals. I’ll go onto read the next one.

The title doesn’t do it justice

I was searching for a tie in with the title that never presented itself to me. However I totally enjoyed trying to find it! The author offered so many possible reasons why so many of the characters could have been the murderer that I couldn’t stop listening! Now I’m ready for book 2!

Good characters, obvious perpetrator

I enjoyed the characters in this book, the side characters as much if not more than our lead, Bridget Hart. I will continue with the series to see what more develops with the characters.

I do have to say that I knew “whodunnit“ very early in the story, and basically why. This doesn’t usually happen for me so early in a procedural/mystery. It was a tad disappointing in that. But, I will at least give the next in the series a go.

The narrator was mostly very good, with a couple of tone disconnects when she was doing a male voice.

Great start of a new series

Really enjoyed listening to this audiobook and looking forward to the next in the series