Greg Abimola is a language teacher – Russian, primarily – at the prestigious Calderhill Academy in Pittsburgh, PA, having come over to teach from England. His classroom style may be slightly unconventional at times, but he keeps his head down and fits in. Except there are two important lies in that description – Greg isn’t English. And Greg isn’t Greg.

But when a troublesome parent is found murdered in the basement, and the closest person Greg has to a friend is accused of the crime, Greg has to step out of the shadows to clear her name. But there was a very good reason why Greg was in the shadows – and now someone from his past has found out where he is…

And now a quick question to you, dear reader?

WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME ABOUT THIS BOOK?

I’ve been struggling recently with reading. Too many things in my life (and, admittedly, the new Zelda game didn’t help – it’s so cute!) but I’ve started two new novels this month and didn’t make it to 20% each time. Either nothing happening, an irritating POV or both. But I had a review e-copy of book two in this series, out next month, because the description sounded so enticing on NetGalley, so I thought, why not, let’s have a look at Book One.

Gripping doesn’t even come close to describing this – it’s absolutely fantastic. An absolutely riveting read.

So what sort of book is it? Well… um… first and foremost, it’s a classicly-styled mystery. Plenty of questions abound, not least of which is how the victim found her way into the school basement. There are clues of a sort, and it took a long while before I twigged who the killer was despite, in hindsight, only one character making sense (when you look at it in the right direction). But while the mystery is the most important part of the book, it’s far from the only part of the story.

There’s some great character work, not just on Greg but also on the suspects and on the (incredibly repellent) person who is hunting him. There are modern themes, both on sexuality and racism, but they support the story, it’s not as if the plot grinds to a halt to lever in a lecture. There’s the mystery of what exactly is lurking in Greg’s past is intriguing (and is clearly going to run throughout the series) and the pacing and plotting is top notch.

I think what sold me early on was when Greg has to get a confession from one of five students as to who committed some vandalism in the classroom. Now I’ve been known to be a tricky so-and-so when it comes to this sort of thing, but this was a great sequence (which I won’t spoil). And once the book had gripped me, it didn’t let go.

So, a unique marriage between classic mystery (Agatha gets a few name checks) and thriller (completely different to Anthrax Island which combined the genre in a different way), that succeeds on every level. I’m so looking forward to Book Two, but in the meantime, let me repeat myself:

WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME ABOUT THIS BOOK?

A Quiet Teacher is available in all formats, with the ebook being particularly affordable at the moment.