The Final Lecture: The Fifth Charles Bentley Mystery

by Glen Ebisch

Charles Bentley receives two surprises. First of all his wife, Joanna, who is also chief of police in Opalsville where they live, wants to have a large Thanksgiving celebration in their new home. She asks Charles to do the inviting. Under some pressure he agrees, wondering all the while where he will round up enough people for such a gathering. The second surprise comes when his old friend Sidney Collins comes to see him. Charles and Sidney were undergraduates together at Yale and went on together for graduate school in English literature at Harvard. Sidney is a well known public intellectual, esteemed for his books, teaching, and lectures on topics in British literature. He has been asked this year to give the Simpson Literature Lectures at Opal College where Charles has just retired from teaching. Although Charles is pleased to see his old friend, he is saddened by what he perceives as a subtle decline in Sidney's physical and intellectual abilities. Charles willingly agrees to attend the first lecture that evening, little suspecting that it may be the final lecture.

Genres: Fiction

106 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 7, 2021

About the author

Glen Albert Ebisch lives with his wife in western Massachusetts. His interests include philosophy, yoga, and reading mysteries..

Reviews

[Michael Hartnett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much More Than a Cozy Mystery
Glen Ebisch’s The Final Lecture is a charming, sly cozy mystery that offers the reader both a clever plot and a window into the machinations of academia. One of the pleasures of The Final Lecture is how fully developed Ebisch’s characters are. In fact, the reader feels fully entrenched in the small college town vibe of Opalsville. Retired English professor Charles Bentley is our affable protagonist, who navigates through the murder investigation much the way he navigates his life, with a keen analytical mind, softened by his soothing, kindly manners.
The murder of Charles’s old friend, the famed scholar Sidney Collins, leads to an investigation that takes the reader into the dark heart of university politics with a series of manipulators jockeying for positions. The rising scholar Katie Cresteverde is a particularly memorable character with her cool demeanor masking ruthless ambition. Ebisch unfolds the plot with deftness and care as the stories of suspects shift subtly and lurid relationships with Sidney, who was quite the rake, unfold.
As the novel reaches its satisfying resolution, I found myself completely hooked into Charles Bentley’s world, listening to his colleague Yuri wonderfully butcher idioms, following the nascent romance of his daughter Amy with the gallery owner Sanjay, and watching Charles steadily gather a large crowd for Thanksgiving dinner.
Indeed, what makes The Final Lecture so enjoyable is that a rich life co-exists with the mystery, leading the reader to care so much more about how the story resolves.

[Joan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars Retired professor Charles Bentley is sitting in his Opal College office when an old friend from his college days at Yale, Sidney Collins, suddenly appears. Sidney, a famous professor at Yale, is in town to give a set of lectures about Dickens. The first talk is tonight. As the time for the lecture approaches, Yuri, the head of Opal College’s English Department, seems very nervous. He tells Charles he can’t find his speaker. A short time later, Sidney’s dead body is found. This the second time a lecture arraigned by Yuri was cancelled because the speaker was found dead. Yuri is wondering if he is jinxed! This book is about people who get what they want in life by manipulating other people. It never ends well…

[Patricia Mccammon · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Charles Bentley mystery series are very good. Each one has a good plot with great characters