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An Educated Death
A famous geology researcher and professor, Ralph Pangbourne was more powerful than popular. But who hated him enough to murder him and then to place his lifeless body in a medieval stock on the campus green? Retired CIA agent Henry Garrett is on the scene to find out.
235 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
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September 13, 2011
Retired CIA agent Henry Garrett allows himself, despite wife Valery's protests, to be recruited for a temporary assignment looking into why a U.S.A. university's geological team is refusing to release The Precursor -- a specialized computer that the college team borrowed to do an extensive ocean floor survey. The USA intelligence agency had gone along with this, hoping to eavesdrop on Russian ports.
Then the leader of the university expedition, Dr. Ralph Pangbourne, is murdered. Not just murdered, but with his body placed into a display of humiliation stocks that are part of a medieval fair on the campus.
As Henry investigates the murder, he deals with the hostility of his son - a university student who Henry reluctantly suspects of the murder.
This was published in 1983 and is part of my collection of "waiting to read" books that I've collected over the years. Modern things like cell phones and laptop computers aren't available for Henry to solve the murder more easily. So there is a need for him to be more cunning.
The story engaged me except for a few points that I found distasteful. First, Henry's son Philip punches his girlfriend Tracy hard enough to send her off a second floor balcony. She is badly injured. Yet no charges are filed against Philip, and Tracy returns to him without much resistance. I don't care how sorry Philip is - he committed a violent crime and at the VERY least, he should have had to work a lot harder to win Tracy back.
Second, they learn that Dr. Pangbourne is an evil trickmaster. In particular, he killed his neighbor's dog by taping a plastic bag over its head, then pumped the dog with air to make it look bloated. The dog was then placed on the neighbor's porch bloated-side-up, to make it look as if the neighbor's seafood cookout contained lethally bad seafood. The neighbor was a local political figure. His guests all ended up at the hospital having their stomachs pumped (for no reason), and his political career was ruined.
I can (barely) buy the dog-killing. Way too many people think nothing of an innocent animal's life. What I object to is the fact that the author had Philip and Tracy LAUGHING at Henry's revealing of this info, as if the killing and suffering of an innocent dog were funny. It would be one thing if Philip and Tracy were being portrayed as evil people who took pleasure in a living being's suffering. But they were being shown as normal people. They should have been shocked, NOT amused, at the killing of a dog. Especially as a practical joke. Even back in the early 1980s, I like to think that most people knew better than that.
Even though this book was a good read and the mystery came to a satisfactory conclusion, I can't recommend it in good conscience. Draw your own conclusions.
Then the leader of the university expedition, Dr. Ralph Pangbourne, is murdered. Not just murdered, but with his body placed into a display of humiliation stocks that are part of a medieval fair on the campus.
As Henry investigates the murder, he deals with the hostility of his son - a university student who Henry reluctantly suspects of the murder.
This was published in 1983 and is part of my collection of "waiting to read" books that I've collected over the years. Modern things like cell phones and laptop computers aren't available for Henry to solve the murder more easily. So there is a need for him to be more cunning.
The story engaged me except for a few points that I found distasteful. First, Henry's son Philip punches his girlfriend Tracy hard enough to send her off a second floor balcony. She is badly injured. Yet no charges are filed against Philip, and Tracy returns to him without much resistance. I don't care how sorry Philip is - he committed a violent crime and at the VERY least, he should have had to work a lot harder to win Tracy back.
Second, they learn that Dr. Pangbourne is an evil trickmaster. In particular, he killed his neighbor's dog by taping a plastic bag over its head, then pumped the dog with air to make it look bloated. The dog was then placed on the neighbor's porch bloated-side-up, to make it look as if the neighbor's seafood cookout contained lethally bad seafood. The neighbor was a local political figure. His guests all ended up at the hospital having their stomachs pumped (for no reason), and his political career was ruined.
I can (barely) buy the dog-killing. Way too many people think nothing of an innocent animal's life. What I object to is the fact that the author had Philip and Tracy LAUGHING at Henry's revealing of this info, as if the killing and suffering of an innocent dog were funny. It would be one thing if Philip and Tracy were being portrayed as evil people who took pleasure in a living being's suffering. But they were being shown as normal people. They should have been shocked, NOT amused, at the killing of a dog. Especially as a practical joke. Even back in the early 1980s, I like to think that most people knew better than that.
Even though this book was a good read and the mystery came to a satisfactory conclusion, I can't recommend it in good conscience. Draw your own conclusions.
Displaying 1 of 1 review