Rousseau's Ghost: A Novel

by Terence Ball

A long-missing manuscript from a famous eighteenth-century philosopher with a dark secret, the late twentieth-century murder in Paris of a prominent Princeton professor-and the connection between the two-form the core of this fast-paced mystery novel. Set primarily in Paris and Oxford, Rousseau's Ghost weaves a riveting tale of scholarly intrigue and murder. An urgent but cryptic request from Professor Ted Porter summons his old friend and former Rhodes Scholar Jack Davis to Paris. Once there Jack finds his friend dead, apparently electrocuted by a faulty laptop computer. The Parisian police rule the death an accident and close the case. But Jack well knew his friend's deep aversion to modern technology, and to computers in particular, and believes the computer was not Ted's and his death no accident. Unable to convince the police, Jack begins his own investigation, aided by Danielle, a beautiful young French woman who claims to have been Ted's research assistant and sometime lover. Sifting through Ted's notes and an unfinished manuscript titled Rousseau's Ghost, he finds a mysterious "Inst Pol" Not knowing what this might mean, he travels to Oxford to see his old tutor, who surmises that Ted's shorthand query refers to the Institutions Politiques, a manuscript on which Rousseau worked in the 1750s but later abandoned and burned, except for the small section we now know as the Social Contract. Could the rest of the manuscript have survived? Could Ted have found it? If so, was he murdered for his discovery? Could Jack and Danielle be next?

216 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terence Ball is a poli-sci professor and his day job shows in this less than engaging mystery novel ("A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author." G. K. Chesterton). I kept reading, largely because of a current interest in Rousseau and the settings in Paris and Oxford. And its details could have been interesting - the discovery of a missing Rousseau manuscript, but Ball explains too much, force feeds too many details and brand names, and shows too little. His women seem to be from some adolescent fantasy, not in any graphic detail, but in their willingness. And the plot is both too simple and too convoluted, all rolling to an unsatisfying ending. Not recommended.