Paul Fallows is the most reclusive person since Howard Roark. Students have been looking for him for years. A game has sprung up around their search called The Procedure. It is played by immediately stepping into a roll as one of the characters in one of the two novels he wrote. There is reportedly another novel but is has never been found.
Upon the death/murder of Michael Tanner his fellow classmates regroup to pay tribute and to become reacquainted. Alexandria Shipley, Dr. of Literature at Harvard has been chosen to give the eulogy. Part of a night class years prior Alex, Michael, and others meet to talk over their memories. Originally a group of nine of the best and brightest Lit scholars their number is rapidly decreasing. A police detective is killed, he was one of the group as well.
The number one suspect is Dr. Richard Aldiss. Teacher of the night class he made a different impression on each of his students. He is crippled now, but wasn’t when he taught their class from prison where he was held for murdering two female students at another university. Free at last could he be committing some sort of payback? Alex is dedicated to solving this mystery, just as she and Jacob Keller solved the one nine years ago. Will she live long enough to find the killer? Will any of them?
WOW! This thriller made me think wrong about a dozen times and I absolutely had no idea until the real “bad-person” was revealed. That doesn’t happen very often. The characters were so well written that I could see them meeting in my living room. The plot very well done and I couldn’t have asked for a better story.