Murders In The Ivory Tower

Two crime-fighting South-Asian cousins, Leela and Meena Rao are back on the scene of multiple killings in this compelling murder mystery by Kamakshi Murti, author of Murders Most Matronly. The cousins' ambition is to emulate Christie's Jane Marple - in this latest story, they become embroiled in a series of gruesome homicides. After a bloody discovery at the prestigious Anderson College of star quarterback Sean O'Flaherty, staff and students are drawn into the lives of drug-consumed, Ivy League collegians. When a second body is found, that of a popular Zimbabwean TA in the African Studies department, the cousins must establish how and why these two students have become inextricably linked. As more killings come to light, they seem to point towards radicalism, but are they as straightforward as they seem or is someone trying to distract from the real motive? Faced with a surfeit of suspects, will Leela and Meena be able to obtain justice for the heinous crimes and reveal the truth?

Is academia's ivory tower immune to murder and mayhem? Leela and Meena, my feisty 76-year-old South-Asian women take up their favorite hobby once again: sleuthing when a popular athlete and an exchange student from Zimbabwe are murdered on the campus of a prestigious liberal arts college. Leela and Meena get a letter from Madhu, the daughter of a close friend and an Assistant Professor at the college, to assist in the investigation. Persons of interest range from the baseball coach to a corrupt dean and a homophobic professor. But why would the killer bludgeon one of the victims to death, then decapitate him? And what does the inscription in Arabic carved into the chest of one of the victims signify?

At an Oxford conference on The Lingering Effects of the King Arthur Tales on Life in Elizabethan England¿ two participants don't fit in. Dotsy Lamb¿ PhD candidate from Virginia¿ has inadvertently invited a couple of New Agers from Glastonbury. Their agenda is to prove to the arrogant academics that King Arthur and Guinevere were real people. But Bram Fitzwaring doesn't show up for his scheduled address¿ because he's still in his room. Dead.

Virginia Vanderlyn, infamously adulterous wife of an archaeology professor, is found buried beneath the cellar floorboards of her Clare College home. The murder compels Professors Antigone and Hiawatha Musing to investigate, using their complementary gifts for reason and intuition in this sumptuously atmospheric mystery. Grave Circle seduces readers with alluring settings, poignantly human characters, and a stunning resolution.

Dotsy's at a scholarly conference at Oxford; the subject is The Lingering Effects of the King Arthur Tales on Life in Elizabethan England. But two participants don't fit in: Dotsy has inadvertently invited a couple of New Agers from Glastonbury. Their agenda is to prove to these arrogant academics that King Arthur and Guinevere were real people. As a big surprise, Bram Fitzwaring plans to produce their royal bones. When he turns up dead, Fitzwaring-- an insulin-dependent diabetic-- appears to have died from hypoglycemia. But Dotsy, also diabetic, says his symptoms prior to his demise do not spell hypoglycemia. They spell murder.

Have you ever wondered if all your dreams one day could be lost forever? "Hurry up, Rose, we're going to miss the train!" I must admit, I was definitely dragging my feet. It had been a long, drawn out night. A night not only filled with getting everything into place, but a night filled with emotion, deceit, apprehension, and uncertainty. Our drive to escape an overwhelming darkness, however, was strong enough to keep us moving. My other half, which is what I called Marissa when we were by ourselves, had gotten some sleep, maybe a couple of hours. She needed it, being four months pregnant. I had finally put our plan into action: the bikes by the river, the backpacks open with books strewn about. I hope it works. Nothing can go wrong now. Thinking back, my eyes swelled up with tears remembering how we got to this point. From two teenage girls with so many hopes and dreams to two lost souls on the run. As we took that first step onto the train headed to an unknown territory, we knew there was no turning back. A plan to uncover my family's lost fortune in Germany was our only hope of maybe one day recovering what was so viciously taken from us. Our dreams.

A cursory reading of the history of US colleges and universities reveals that campus crime has been part of collegiate life since the Colonial Era, yet it was not until the late 1980s that it suddenly became an issue on the public stage. Drawing from numerous mass media and scholarly sources and using a theoretical framework grounded in social constructionism, this text chronicles how four groups of activists - college student advocates, feminists, victims and their families, and public health experts - used a variety of tactics and strategies to convince the public that campus crime posed a new danger to the safety and security of college students and the ivory tower itself, while simultaneously convincing policymakers to take action against the problem. Readers from a range of disciplinary interests will find the book both compelling and valuable to understanding campus crime as a newly constructed social reality.