PhDeath: The Puzzler Murders

by James Carse

(Book). PhDeath is a fast-paced thriller set in a major university in a major city on a square. The faculty finds itself in deadly intellectual combat with the anonymous Puzzler. Along with teams of US Military Intelligence and the city's top detective and aided by the Puzzle Master of The New York Times, their collective brains are no match for the Puzzler's perverse talents. Carse, Emeritus Professor himself at a premier university in a major city on a square shows no mercy in his creation of the seemingly omniscient Puzzler, who through a sequence of atrocities beginning and ending with the academic year, turns up one hidden pocket of moral rot after another: flawed research, unabashed venality, ideological rigidity, pornographic obsessions, undue political and corporate influence, subtle schemes of blackmail, the penetration of national and foreign intelligence agencies, brazen violation of copyrights, even the production and sale of addictive drugs.

Genres: Mystery, New York, Fiction

384 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 2016

Reviews

[Larry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Someone is killing deans at a large university. (As a retired professor I'm not surprised that I wasn't moved by the crimes.) The killer leaves riddles behind. A faculty committee made up of people who like to tease out the meaning of puzzles is given the task of deciphering the messages and identifying the killer. (The typical faculty committee, especially one composed of prima donnas, might solve the case in twenty years or so.) Given the uneven socialization of professors, and their intensely competitive ways, universities are good settings for mass murders. The detailed justifications given for the murders that make up much of the book's second half make up one long academic joke. Like most academic jokes, it is funnier in the conceptualizing than in the delivery.

[Zippergirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Match wits with the Puzzler. Ten email dispatches. Ten clues each. Grab your pencils and begin. And don't forget to double-check your work, lives are on the line.

PhDeath is a very literate murder x10 mystery which takes place in the halls of academia at almost-Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A fun and weirdly compelling book with a lot to say about higher education and human nature.

If you enjoy puzzles, thoughtful social commentary, and surprises--including cameo appearances by America's most celebrated movers and shakers--put it on your must-read list.

P.S. Prepare yourself for one heck of a twist! I sat here staring at the page wondering if I had read it wrong. How often does that happen?

I received this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Hastings75 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Am going to start this review by saying that never have I been dropped from such a great height in expectations regarding a book!

A book about:

- Puzzles to solve - tick
- Crime - tick
- Whodunit - tick
- Victims slowly picked off - tick
- Closed door murders - tick

What could possibly not be loved about this?! My crime reading utopia - or so it would seem!

All of the above existed and validly deserve the 5 ticks awarded.

Where it all falls down is that despite the author delivering on all of the above, these elements are MASSIVELY overshadowed by the author's desire to spend long passages pushing political agendas and views on society/academia/morality that detract from the story telling! The closing 80 pages are almost a "how great thou art" homily to the author! Maybe all of this was the point of the novel but I was left feeling let down by the novel - thinking what could have been!

I do not recommend this novel for readers looking for a quick and easy read. If you want to be challenged about the education sector and morality, this may be the book for you. If you a student at the university where Carse teachers, be wary!

Gets two stars - one for the puzzles and one for the identity of the murderer who I twigged to earlier on but still didn't spoil the "reveal".

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Carse is a retired professor of philosophy, and that profession shines clearly in this novel. He sets the book in a major university in a large city (Prof. Carse worked at NYU) and he fills the book with philosophical background, mostly from Greek philosophy. James Carse is als0, apparently, a puzzle fanatic. This murder mystery is filled with one very clever puzzle after another. The reader, just as the main characters in the novel, are challenged with the job of figuring out the puzzles as they occur. Each puzzle tells of an upcoming murder of someone affiliated with the university. It's a great deal of fun to try to understand the puzzles, and, moreso, to try to figure out whodunit. A brilliant and extremely clever novel.

[Maggie Holmes · Rating 2 out of 5]

A serial killer at a university, puzzle clues to discover the why and the next victim, twists and turns. What's not to like?
Well, the puzzles quickly become boring. I found myself skipping several pages. Even the denouement chapters were boring.
The unreliable narrator wasn't interesting -- although became more so at the end.
Certainly won't buy for the library.

Exercise analogy: tossing and turning in bed

[Maxine · Rating 4 out of 5]

PhDeath by author James Carse is called a thriller but it would more rightly be called an academic or even more accurately a cerebral mystery if such a designation exists. A university campus is beset by a series of murders of professors. Before each crime, a complicated puzzle is sent that names the next victim. The police are completely baffled by the murders and a committee is setup by the university president to try to solve the puzzles before anymore have to die.

Carse, himself, is a Professor Emeritus at New York University and he clearly knows his subject including all of the hypocrisies, scandals, and petty fights fueled by eg the need to publish or perish that can, I imagine, arise on any university campus. The cover blurb describes PhDeath as fast paced; I would disagree. It is certainly smart but its pacing is rather slow as the puzzles, which all have 10 parts are discussed, analysed by the Committee and, in a couple of cases, by expert outsiders, each part is looked at and solved separately, and evidence is examined it seems minutely. Like I suspect most readers, I tried my hand at solving them but I admit, in the end, I managed to solve only one and some parts of a couple of others. For the most part, though, they were completely beyond my admittedly meager puzzle-solving skills but it was a lot of fun trying.

Case explains the motivation behind each murder and they are definitely not your usual reasons. Perhaps because my university years are long behind me and any relations I have had since with academic types has been social, as much as I have no doubt they addressed real problems in academia, they didn’t exactly give me that aha moment that, say, an Agatha Christie mystery might. Still, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s been a long time since I had to work so hard to get to the solution of a murder mystery – it may seem odd that I found this a reason to enjoy it but, after reading a whole lot of mysteries that were so formulaic that the solution was obvious in the first chapter, PhDeath was a nice challenge.

Thanks to Edelweiss and Opus Books for the opportunity to read this book in an exchange for an honest review

[Marta Romero · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring, bad, and sloppily edited.

A newly appointed dean of a major University falls to his death. Shortly after, the college staff receives a cryptic series of riddles hinting that there will be more murders to follow. A team of professors is selected to solve the puzzles and hopefully catch the culprit.

In another universe PhDeath may have had potential. Unfortunately no one told Carse it's 200 pages too long and 200 pages too boring and 400 pages nonsensical. It's unclear what the committee is in charge of. Solving riddles? They post the riddles in the media and ask for worldwide help. Preventing more murders? They don't. What the hell is the police doing, exactly? No one behaves like they're human. There's not a single person or scene in the novel that follows any sort of earthly logic. If the author is going to ignore reality, at least take advantage of some over-the-top comedy or something. Carse tries to add some humor but his idea of comedy is apparently "flat caricatures saying annoying things." To be fair, that can be funny, but with this execution, it's not.

The characters are as flat as the pages they're printed on. Too much of the book is devoted to puzzle-solving scenes, which have all the thrill of watching an ant crawl across a table. Or maybe less. The other parts of the book are devoted to different boring talkiness. The last part is a whopping 100 pages of dull complaining. The tragedy is that Carse is clearly a smart man but a terrible writer who thinks the former supersedes the latter.

The book has typos and formatting issues on almost every page. Whole pages are skipped so as not to make the book better and shorter, but more confusing. A sentence will finish on one page and the next page will start halfway through a line of dialogue. Egregious. It's a bad sign when the errors are not only prevalent but also distracting, and an even worse sign when they're not even the worst part of the book.

[Vontel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read only the first few chapters, maybe 20% of the book. Then skimmed & skipped rapidly through the rest & decided not to spend intensive time reading the book, just wanted to find out "whodunit". Otherwise it did get a bit boring & pedantic. I don't know if trying to read it while coming down with a cold contributed to my experience.

I enjoyed the academic year rhythms used as an organizing platform. The Puzzler/thriller/academic subjects & expertise trope was interesting at the beginning, but wore a little thin. Poking holes in the current academic elitism, economics & politics of a research-intensive undergraduate university was interesting & funny at times. Has it ever been different?

The author has written & published a number of academic books, & this one represents a big shift. It may have been liberating to write a thriller novel.

[Vicki · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book features the worst proofreading I ever "hop" to find in a published book, to quote one of its many uncaught errors. Otherwise, the mystery is quite enjoyable, sort of like The Westing Game for college-educated adults. The author is a retired NYU professor.

[M Elaine · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a load of piffle. Inflated, self-obsessed machinations trotted out as puzzles. Neither a mystery, nor a thriller, simply a waste of time.

[Raymond · Rating 1 out of 5]

I gave this 110 pages, but lackluster writing and indistinguishable characters make me want to move onto something better.

[Erica Akehurst · Rating 1 out of 5]

Should have DNF when a 5th grader had to come in to help the college professors with basic math.

[Kazen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The jacket copy calls this a thriller but I'd say it's a mystery. There's been a string of murders at an elite university and the police, Feds, and a committee of professors are on the case. Each death is preceded by a ten part puzzle from the murderer, hinting at the next victim

The good:

- Several of the murders are creative and spectacular in a fun way.

- Puzzles! You'll probably be able to figure out a couple parts as you go, and some are quite interestingly put together.

- The Puzzle Master of the New York Times does indeed make an appearance, and it's glorious.

- The scene where the Puzzler is unmasked is amazing. I was thrown for a loop - it's a double reveal and I was blindsided on both counts. I went "Wait... what? HOW?" before flipping back to see how I possibly could have missed it. Well done.

- Whys and wherefores are fully explained in detail once the criminal is identified. Only one detail I was curious about wasn't expounded upon, which is pretty good.

The not-so-good:

- The number ten is big in this book so each of the ten puzzles has ten parts. All ten clues have a similar theme, so once you figure out the first few you can almost skip the rest, as the method has become clear. However each part is painstakingly covered with answers and reasoning given, even for an arithmetic puzzle. Judicious skimming helped me get through.

- Looking for a breezy mystery? This isn't it. If you like this sort of thing you'll call it cerebral, but it veers towards "lecture about dead white guy philosopher" too much for me. Here and there it's interesting, but in other places it goes on too long.

Go in to PhDeath knowing it's a philosophizing mystery. Enjoy the crazy deaths, skim over clues that don't interest you, and watch out for that reveal - it's a doozy.

[ManOfLaBook.com · Rating 4 out of 5]

PhDeath: The Puzzler Murders by James P. Carse is a fictional mystery taking place at a university in New York. Mr. Carse is a university professor himself.

This is a very smart murder mystery. The plot keeps on moving forward and Mr. Carse does not underestimate his audience, writing in rich language and assuming the reader knows what he’s talking about (or, at least, can use an Internet search engine).

The murdered, known only as The Puzzler, sends 10 puzzles to the same university, each puzzle will disclose the name of the professor who is next in line to die. A committee chaired by Prof. Carmody is tasked with solving these puzzles before the next murder. The group gets lots of help, from grade school math teachers to Noble Laureates in solving those puzzles and getting to the murderer.

This book took me a little longer than usual to read because I had a great time trying (emphasis on “trying”) to solve the puzzles, which come in a form of lists (10 each, a pattern repeating itself throughout the book). The first three puzzles I had some luck and one or two of the last ones, but some I had no idea where to even start – all part of the fun.

The social commentary the author provided, being a university professor, was also well worth reading. I’m glad someone in education feels the way he does and that maybe there is some way we can correct the issues.

For more reviews and bookish posts please visit: http://www.ManOfLaBook.com

[Hanna · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldn't get far through this. Maybe I'm used to action and not figuring out how to place my mindset on it's "puzzles" aside from the fact that I have a hard time believing NYU doesn't have security cameras in the City of New York.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I confess, I am not a huge fan of detective stories (with the possible exception of the far-fetched but entertaining antics of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes). This book is best appreciated as satire: The author takes an obvious and playful delight in sending up the increasingly money-garnering, hypocritical, plagiarizing-publish-or-perish model for academia today. Much amusing and clever stuff here, but a real pity the editor did not tighten up the text, or hire a decent proofreader (e.g., page 277 should go.after 258, "grisly" not "grizzly," 2nd A in "Shawangunk").

[Joseph · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm sorry, but Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" this isn't. The author wrote an ok story, but it could be a whole lot shorter and after a while it just seems to be repeating itself. The puzzles were interesting, but there was too much unneeded fluff involved. Also, a pet peeve of mine, the editing was horrendous. There were typos, line spacing errors, page number mistakes, and font design and size inconsistency throughout the whole book. An ok read, but definitely one I would check out from the library and won't be rereading.

[Sara]

It was an interesting book. Interesting plot twist at the end. Only complaint is on the editing. There were quite a few grammar errors and it one spot a whole page out of sequence.