Alcorn, Alfred. Murder in the Museum of Man. Zoland Books, 1997.
Reason read: May is a traditional graduation month for colleges and universities. Read in honor of commencements everywhere.
Wainscott University is your typical institutional of higher education full of snobbery intellectuals, grant-fueled competition, and academic politics. Add crime to the list when Dean Cranston Fessing goes missing. When it is revealed that Fessing was not only murdered but cannibalized, Museum of Man (MOM) secretary Norman de Rateur turns amateur detective to solve the crime. Then another dean is decapitated. Murder in the Museum of Man turns to mayhem. Through de Ratuer’s journal we follow the action.
Norman is an interesting character. He pines for an old girlfriend who wrote him a Dear John letter while he was serving in the military decades earlier. And speaking of the girl, I won’t give it away, but the ending was my favorite.
Confessional: why is it that I have a lukewarm dislike of academic satires? The names of characters are always ridiculous and the snarkiness is at a level I cannot enjoy. Ethnopaleosiphonapterology? The study of fossil fleas? Really? Chimpanzees making sexual advances towards humans and drinking their beer? Really?
Author fact: According to Google, Alfred Alcorn is former director of travel at Harvard University’s Museum of Natural History.
Book trivia: Murder in the Museum of Man is part of a series. I am only reading the one.
Setlist: Dvorak Piano Quintet in A, Brahms, and Schubert’s Die Unterscheidung.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Academic Mysteries” (p 4).
~*LunaSea*~ 