Comedian, broadcaster and long-time Classics nut Natalie Haynes tells the story of Alex Morris, a meek former theatre director in her mid-20s who moves from London to Edinburgh after the violent death of her fiance and begins teaching drama to a class of five kids who've been excluded from mainstream school.

Soon enough she's got them discussing Oedipus and Clytemnestra and opening up about their feelings, but one pupil, the partially deaf Melody, becomes obsessed with both her and the Greek tragedies they're discussing, and life starts to imitate art. What reads for 100 pages like a Dead Poets-style classroom drama becomes something bloodier and more elemental.

Haynes's last book was a breezy guide to the ancient world; this is her first novel. It hops artfully between detective noir, tragedy and coming of age and cranks up the suspense once the plot's properly under way. Haynes's passion for the ancient stories is infectious, and a too-neat ending didn't stop me wanting to read the Oresteia next.