History Lessons (A Daphne Ouverture Mystery) - Hardcover

Wallbrook, Zoe B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 164129552X ISBN 13: 9781641295529

Verlag: Soho Crime, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

A college history professor must solve her superstar colleague's murder before she becomes the next target in this funny, romantic debut mystery, perfect for readers of Janet Evanovich, Kellye Garrett, and Ali Hazelwood.

As a newly minted junior professor, Daphne Ouverture spends her days giving lectures on French colonialism, working on her next academic book, and going on atrocious dates. Her small world suits her just fine. Until Sam Taylor dies.

The rising star of Harrison University’s anthropology department was never one of Daphne’s favorites, despite his popularity. But that doesn’t prevent Sam’s killer from believing Daphne has something that belonged to Sam—something the killer will stop at nothing to get.

Between grading papers and navigating her disastrous love life, Daphne embarks on her own investigation to find out what connects her to Sam’s murder. With the help of an alluring former-detective-turned-bookseller, she unravels a deadly cover-up on campus.

This well-crafted, voice-driven mystery introduces an unforgettable crime fiction heroine.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Zoe B. Wallbrook is a tenured professor whose idea of a break from academic writing is apparently more writing. History Lessons, her first novel, has been nominated for an Edgar Award, ITW Thriller Award, and NAACP Award, among other distinctions. In her spare time, she and her husband try to convince their dog Sophie to actually listen to them for once.

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Prologue

Sam Taylor had five minutes to decide how he wanted to die. In the living room, bleeding out on a rug, gazing into the cold, indifferent eyes of an enemy. Or on the run, making it no farther than the outer hedges of his backyard before being struck down like a hunted pheasant.

The doorknob jiggled louder this time, rattling the gold chain on the doorframe and whatever was left of Sam’s nerves along with it. That gold chain was the only thing keeping Sam alive, and that one simple fact plunged his body into ice-cold fear, numbing the tips of his shaking fingers as they pressed against his temples.

Sam scoured the den’s bookshelves and thick pillows, eyes wild, before landing on a poker leaning up against the fireplace. As if thin, hard metal could be the difference between life and death. As if he wouldn’t get laughed at right in his face.

Will they bury my body when it’s over?

No.

They’d cremate it. He’d heard the rumors. The facility was an arsonist’s dream. Tracing would be impossible. Sure, there’d be human DNA inside those ovens, but whose? It would take a decade of subpoenas before the cops figured out if his body was among those vacuumed into the sky.

Boots shuffled behind the door.

Swallowing back the sour tang of bile stinging his throat, he reached for his laptop and began the purge, blinking at the bright fluorescent screen as his data drained away along with what little time he had left on this planet. All of the evidence, gone. Untouchable. Untraceable. Unknowable. His life’s work—for what? To prove what?

The scrape of metal on the doorknob jolted Sam away from his laptop. They were almost inside. Death was so close he could reach across the living room and touch it. There were no plays left to make. It was over. Wasn’t it?

A voice, small and soft, offered a solution, however outrageous. Call her.

He grabbed his phone and dialed the memorized number before he could change his mind.

“Hello, you’ve reached the voicemail of—”

He hung up. Tried again.

“Hello, you’ve reached the—”

Another redial.

“Hello, you’ve—”

He hurled his phone into the couch with the velocity of a Yankees pitcher. “Fuck.”

He plunged his head between his thighs, squeezing blond tufts of hair with tight fists, enjoying the pain stinging his eyes while he hiccupped out a few short breaths.

A thought struck his chest with the force of a baseball bat.

I can still tell her.

He’d never wanted her to know. But if he phrased it right, he could lead her to the truth. Only she was smart enough to figure it out anyway. To take the data and run. To finish what he’d started. And then the world would finally know. There was little glory to be found in these last minutes of life but there might be honor in his death.

Sam grabbed his phone one last time. His thumbs flew across its screen. And just before the squeaking “pop” of a door hinging, before the rush of hard boots stormed his hallway, before rough hands groped his neck, before his bloodied face hit the rug, before the world went black forever, Sam hit send.


Chapter One
“Well, that went terribly.”

Daphne Ouverture, assistant professor of European history, scholar of modern French imperialism, and semiprofessional rambler on the horrors of colonial medicine, slammed her car door shut.

“What are we talking about here on a scale of one to five?” The car’s Bluetooth speakers took over, brightening Elise’s light soprano. “One being that time you set your date’s shirtsleeve on fire with a candle—”

“That was an accident,” Daphne muttered. “We went on like two more dates after that.”

“—and five being when you went out with that silver fox of a man who was super into you only for you to realize at dinner that he was the dad of one of your students?”

Daphne cringed while she maneuvered her car onto the road. No wonder she’d banned dating in Calliope.

“I wouldn’t say that date was a complete bust, though.” Elise’s grin was audible. “That guy was hot. Like if George Clooney was a rugby coach?”

“Elise, you’re one of my bestest friends on the planet but I beg you. Please stop. Remembering this is so horrifying I can’t drive straight.” Daphne’s short, chunky braids tickled the nape of her neck as she shuddered. “That’s what I get for thinking I could just casually flirt with somebody in the cereal aisle.”

“You can totally flirt, babe.” Elise, as always, chose to see sunshine, puppies, and free SZA tickets where there was scorched earth. “You just gotta do it with the right person. And your Bumble date tonight, Ricky—he wasn’t it.”

Daphne slowed her car at a red light. “Nope.”

If only that DM hadn’t pinged during an especially boring faculty meeting, a month after she’d finally given up on dating, Daphne wouldn’t be driving back home on a Saturday night strapped into a dress so tight she’d need the jaws of life later to wrest herself free from it. But the Asianists had decided to wade into the department’s Sisyphean struggle to determine whether the Modern Istanbul survey course counted toward the European or Middle Eastern history minor for undergraduate students, thus locking horns, yet again, with the director of undergraduate studies, whose task it was to assign this designation for the next academic year. Daphne was only a first-year professor at Harrison University—a Bambi in the eyes of her colleagues—but even she’d lost all hope that the meeting could be salvaged once her colleague began to explain in precise detail the long history of translocal mail runners on the Silk Road. Ten minutes into the diatribe, a giggling panic had bubbled up in her chest at the realization that she’d locked herself into this career for the next thirty years.

She’d reached for her phone as if it was a life raft on the Lusitania, desperate to prove that there was more to her future at Harrison University than fights over the Mongolian postal system. And there he was, this stud named Ricky who had promised her dinners and front-row seats to whatever her heart desired. Daphne found the thin, hard shell she’d built up for herself begin to melt like the chocolate flan he swore he’d make her from scratch. She didn’t know what she hated more—wanting to feel wanted, or not being able to remember the last time someone had.

She’d been on enough dinner dates to know that the profile picture rarely matched the man. But lo and behold, the Ricky she’d met in the overstuffed restaurant appeared to be as dashing in person as he’d been on her phone screen. He’d swooped down to give her a peck on the cheek—and, she noticed, to check out her décolletage—oozing sex, adventure, and expensive aftershave. His scheming, twinkling brown eyes promised her a passionate night if she wanted it. And for the first time in a long time, she thought she might.

Not for the last time, Daphne cursed the Mongols.

“Did he like your story about Belgium, at least?” Elise asked.

“You mean how nineteenth-century Belgian colonial administrators in the Congo dismembered indigenous Africans for the purpose of scaring local villagers into creating profit for their newly emerging rubber industry?” Daphne...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Soho Crime
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 164129552X
• ISBN 13: 9781641295529
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 384
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Soho Press; https://sohopress.com/the-best-of-soho-press-2021/; ; 4 rue Fernand Laguide; Corbeil Essonnes; Ile de France; 91100; Frankreich