Customer Reviews

Celt and Pepper: A Notre Dame Mystery

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Everyone on campus during the winter break is shocked with the death of visiting Irish poet Martin Kilmartin. The South Bend police rule that the ailing Martin died from a heart attack while in the office he used while visiting the University of Notre Dame.

Professor Roger Knight met the poet once, enjoying the discussion and Martin's works. He immediately finds discrepancies at the crime scene that he feels should not be sneezed away as the ramblings of an obese academia amateur. With the help of his professional sleuth sibling Phil, Roger investigates what really happened to Martin. Instead of a simple case, he soon finds university backstabbing, politics, and dispute over establishing the post of Director of the Malachy O'Neil Center of Catholic Literature, an assignment Roger thought Martin was perfect to lead. Did one of these individuals with motive actually pepper the deceased Celt's phone causing the sneeze that killed Martin?

The investigation is fun, but take a back seat to the university that stands out in this exciting amateur sleuth tale. Fans will enjoy the satirical look at professors acting more like Ali-Frazier (either sex) and kissing the butt of a donor. Additionally, the intriguing look at the football stadium during the season (especially with the Fighting Irish in the top ten) brings home a further taste of the school. Still the who-done-it is nothing to sneeze at as Ralph McInerny ironically pokes fun at his own previous work in the series with a delightful Notre Dame University mystery.

Harriet Klausner

Visiting professor Martin Kilmartin wasn't healthy, but there is still something strange about his death. With his romantic 'dying poet' airs, Kilmartin had settled on the most attractive graduate student at Notre Dame, offending established professors. And academic rivalries run deep in that university. Still, when evidence points to murder, the detective/professor and brothers Knight are surprised. Surely disagreements over Yeats couldn't result in murder.

Fans of this series will enjoy author Ralph McInerny's views into University of Notre Dame's present and its past. The brothers Knight make interesting and sympathetic characters as they mingle uneasily with the staff and faculty at the University. When a wealthy ex-student wants to express his appreciation of Notre Dame more financially, Professor Roger Knight is brought into the middle of campus politics--and into closer contact with the soon-to-be victim.

McInerny's writing, his ability to dip into Notre Dame history and philosophy, and his wonderful descriptions of the petty politics that matters so much in any University form the strongest features of CELT AND PEPPER. Improved from earlier books in the series, the two female characters have some added dimension here. Few readers will be challenged by the identity of the killer, but that isn't really the point. Simply put, the book is a pleasant and fast read.

...and either way, this book makes for entertaining reading. Though the Knight brothers are billed as the investigators of the murder, many of the other characters offer opinions, have theories, and act on impulses. As the pages turn, the crime seems almost to succumb to group pressure and to resolve itself. As revealing about Academia as Jane Smiley's _Moo_, Richard Russo's _Straight Man_, and M. D. Lake's Peggy O'Neill mysteries. You may never look at benefactors and building names in quite the same manner.

Ralph McInerny, creator of the Father Dowling series, has produced a pleasant holiday confection. Set on the Notre Dame University campus during Christmas break, it stars the Knight brothers in their fifth mystery.

Remarkably unviolent, by current mystery standards, Celt and Pepper is mostly about love and academic in-fighting. McInerny shows that both can be pretty vicious without much actual bloodshed. The author does some slicing and dicing of his own in his portrayal of various faculty members and university types. The book features a novel method of murder -- death by sneezing. The victim is an Irish poet on a visitng professorship who suffers from an undefined heart condition.

Elements of the story are rooted in Notre Dame's past. This gives McInerny a chance to show the reader the school both in the present and in earlier times. He is more effective at that than he is at delineating the characters of the Knights.

The identity of the murderer is not hard to puzzle out, but then who wants to be overtaxed mentally at Christmas break?