Dead as a Dodo
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Visiting Oxford, the Harvard professor/sleuth gets a crash course in Darwin’s survival of the fittest in a high-spirited whodunit that’s “vintage Langton” (Booklist).
William Dubchick is too keen a student of the writings of Charles Darwin to not see that the world of biology has evolved past him. Decades ago, he was the foremost mind in Oxford University’s department of natural sciences, but as the field’s focus narrowed to the microscopic level he became nothing more than a gray-haired, cantankerous relic. He has a small fiefdom, manned by Helen Farfrae, a committed disciple who, Dubchick is annoyed to learn, someone is trying to kill. It is into this world that Homer Kelly, Emersonian scholar and part-time sleuth, comes to spend a semester lecturing. Though expecting a vacation, he finds Oxford to be a swamp of theft, fraud, and murder. Besides the attempts on Farfrae’s life, he must reckon with a murdered priest, the theft of a dodo’s portrait, and suspicious claims that long-lost Darwinian artifacts have been found. With an academic climate like this, it’s amazing that any of the Oxford dons live to see tenure.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Unbridled egos. Ruthless ambition. Uncontrollable lust. Rage. Brutality. Murder. An evening with the NYPD? No, it's just the usual scholars assembling for the beginning of their academic year at England's stately Oxford University. Visiting Harvard professor Homer Kelly (here in his 12th appearance after The Shortest Day) is to lecture on American literature but instead finds himself embroiled in several perplexing mysteries at once: Has someone discovered the long lost zoological specimens from the original Darwin expedition? Who is trying to murder Helen Farfrae, dedicated assistant to distinguished Darwinian scholar Professor Dubchick? Was Helen's abusive husband's fall from museum scaffolding murder or accident? And who slit the throat of young Anglican priest Oliver Clare, scion of a distinguished family and lately besotted with Dubchick's feisty daughter? Eccentric, gregarious and not at all bashful, Homer is aided by his levelheaded and clear-eyed wife, Mary. Much of the droll and unpredictable activity takes place in the venerable city of Oxford and the Oxford University museum. Surrounded by ghosts and statues of past academics, embroiled in creationism vs. evolutionist dogma and dealing with monumental academic skullduggery, Homer, Mary and the Oxford police are at their best. And, at times, over the top. Illustrations not seen by PW.
