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This American crime novel is the author´s debut.
Nick Merrill is a young graduate student and teacher at Tilton University. Besides teaching psychology, he has designed a promising computer programme, and at the beginning of the story he is informed that he has received the university´s prestigious fellowship for the coming year. As if that is not enough, he is very happy with his girlfriend Angel, and he also enjoys his affair with his more experienced teaching colleague, Dr Carrie Woods!
When the very ambitious student Rose Shelton learns that she did not get the fellowship, she is not exactly thrilled, and when she stumbles upon her mentor, Carrie Woods, in the arms of Nick Merrill, she is certain she has been cheated of a prize which was rightfully hers. And from this moment on, things begin to collide in Nick´s life like a juggler dropping his clubs one after the other until he is finally found dead outside his flat. Did he slip in the bad weather?
Professor Joel Williams of Tilton University who is a former police detective teaching criminal procedure wonders whether Nick´s death is really an accident, perhaps because he knows the academic setting from the inside: the envy and the backstabbing and the pressure to produce several articles every year or you will not get tenure. Professor Williams realizes that the faculty members are ready to lie, cheat, steal – and possibly kill – for promotion.
An engaging and well-written debut by an author who clearly knows the academic setting she writes about.
Margot Kinberg´s inspiring blog, Confessions of a Mystery Novelist.
A thorough review written by Maxine who kindly gave me the book.
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