Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #435475 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 236 pages

Synopsis
Inspired by the film fantasies of 1950s Hollywood, Baroness Troutbeck, an ardent conservative, heads for America to become a visiting professor at an American campus, unaware that U.S. academia is dominated by liberalism and political correctness, and finds herself investigating the possible murder of the late Provost of Freeman State University.

Customer Reviews

Troutbeck Marches On
The eleventh in Ruth Dudley Edwards' series featuring Baroness Jack Troutbeck and the Hapless Amiss finally arrives in the UK.

The Troutbeck series is slightly unusual in that the focus in each novel is a different part of "The Establishment". That part is shown to be both corrupt and absurd, and the incorruptible (although occasionally absurd) Jack Troutbeck always succeeeds in exposing humbugs and charlatans, dispensing along the way humour and wisdom, although the latter can be a bit on the dodgy side. At peak, the series is an accurate and deadly attack on that which it exposes. There's always a murder or two, by the way, which is why these satirical novels are to be found categorised under crime, but quite frequently the identity of the murderer is an adjunct to the main event, Jack Troutbeck putting her substantial boot in.

On this occasion, Troutbeck leaves the UK and her beloved St. Martha's College to take up a visiting fellowship at an American University, in Freeman, Indiana. She is very much on her own, as Robert Amiss has married his long-term girlfriend, and others who have helped out in the past are for one reason or otherunavailable, so she is accompanied only by her parrot, Horace (who, frankly, I could have done without). She soon finds herself astonished at the anti-intellectualism and political correctness of the university faculty, and it isn't long before a group of dissident students make contact. It soon becomes clear that what is afoot isn't just naive and misplaced worthiness, but something more sinister altogether. Eventually Amiss is pulled from his honeymoon to assist in blowing apart the "villains", their crimes and conspiracies (not necessarily the same thing).

Always amusing, the plot is moved along not only by events to which we are privy, but also by e-mails which explain offstage events to those excluded from it, and the reader, and the device works well, saving a lot of time: Not every novel has to be five hundred pages long. Although Dudley Edwards' main target is the left-wing knee-jerk manipulation of American academe, there are many sideswipes, notably at American cuisine. Throughout, though, it's quite clear that it's not Americans per se that the author has anything against, it's stupid people, wherever they may be (see previous ten entries in series).

A slightly overblown climax confuses things a little, but it's all over very quickly, and it doesn't detract from what has gone before. We've waited quite a while for this. Now it's a matter of waiting for the next one. A writer who can write, who has firm opinions but is neither unfair or bigoted, and a talent to amuse. Worth a few quid of anyone's money, I'd have thought...

Murdering Americans
The author turns her attention to the US, specifically US universities. After her witty detective satires on the British Establishment I was looking forward to this book but, sadly, found it a great disappointment. The writer feels strongly about academic standards and academic freedom and it is hard to imagine any reader, certainly any European reader, disagreeing with her. But she is so angry about the excesses of political correctness that the book becomes more of a diatribe than a satire. Perhaps the problem is that the writer felt affection for all her previous subjects - the Church of England, the House of Lords etc. - but none for US universities. Or perhaps she doesn't know them as well as she knows her previous targets. Less humour, and less variation of tone, than in her previous books. New readers, don't start here - try "Matricide at St Martha's" or "Murder in a Cathedral" instead.

Good fun - though I wonder how self-aware the author is
Ruth Dudley Edwards' mysteries are characterised by laugh-out-loud moments and episodes of blinkered reactionary positions portrayed as gospel truth. Along the way she makes telling points in this book about the importance of academic standards, and the challenges of widening access to higher education and of attempting to bring market disciplines to such a field. I didn't really care about the identity of the murderer by the end of the book, but Dudley Edwards' affectionate portrayal of the monstrous Baroness Troutbeck makes for a ripping read that may amuse most more than it frustrates.

I would love to ask the author how she reconciles her ridicule of certain forms of affirmative action with one of the Noble Baroness' actions in the denouement - but then I have never thought that kneejerk reactionary positions are any more logical than any other blind ideological view.