Author Paul Armstrong has recently published his debut novel The Blackthorn Pact, a crime thriller set in Oxford. The novel explores Oxford colleges and lecture halls, alongside Jericho and the Oxfordshire countryside.
The story centres around Arthur Graves, an ex-detective turned criminology lecturer and true-crime novelist, who spends much of his time in a bookshop in Jericho. The detective lost his career over investigating a string of mysterious deaths in Oxfordshire, and, after yet another mysterious death, now decides to investigate independently.
The Oxford lecturer begins to uncover the secrets of powerful country estates and closed families, discovering a dark conspiracy that has destroyed lives for a long time.
Armstrong was raised in Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, but has spent part of his career working across the Cotswolds, which familiarised him with the Oxfordshire region. He began planning the novel in January 2025 as a New Year’s resolution, and went through 25 drafts before reaching the finished product. The novel was published on the 14th October, and is now being sold on Amazon (£9.99, paperback) and Kindle (£2.99 or free with Kindle unlimited).
The author has already begun writing the sequel to the story, The Cowley Butcher, which is forecast to be published in late January next year. The sequel will see Graves investigate the murders of the ‘Cowley Butcher’ after a construction crew uncovers a chamber of corpses at the old Cowley Youth Centre.
Recent years have seen Oxford feature regularly as the setting for films and novels. Well-known films include My Oxford Year (2025), a romantic drama based on an ambitious American who undertakes a Year Abroad at the university, and Saltburn (2023), a psychological thriller following a shy undergraduate.
Modern novels set in Oxford include historical fiction Babel, or The Necessity of Violence (2022), where Oxford serves as a centre of darkness, magic, and knowledge, and has become a New York Times Bestseller. The Bone Season (2023), a dystopian sci-fi novel published in 2023, features Oxford as a hidden secret city.
With Armstrong’s new series, Oxford’s popularity as a backdrop for popular culture looks set to continue.