Books in Brief - Review

Publish and Perish, by Sally S. Wright (Ballantine, 214 pp., $5.99)

For mystery readers who like to get in on the ground floor with a new author, may I present Sally Wright? Her detective, Ben Reese, is by vocation an academic archivist. He is also a war hero (World War II, military intelligence), a widower (who to his dismay finds that he cannot accurately recall the lineaments of his beloved Jessie's face), and a man who greatly enjoys his friends' quirks and quiddities. Not least those of a colleague at Alderton University, Richard West, who starts the novel by getting himself killed. Richard has been named chairman of the English department over a senior colleague who fully expected to get the job. Richard's greatest joy (even greater than cooking and eating) is following an argument to its conclusion; he is only vaguely aware that those who don't share his intellectual excitement frequently see his doggedness as a personal attack. There thus prove to be a fair number of people who have a grudge against Richard. But is a grudge sufficient motive for murder? Ben at one point reflects that when he knew why Richard and another person had been killed, he would know who had done it. Lord Peter Wimsey, in a similar circumstance, says, "When you've got How you've got Who." But Ben is not indulging in nebulous psychologizing, nor is Sally Wright. She plays fair with her clues. She also takes us through scenes of physical agony and moral squalor, domestic tranquility and down-to-earth common sense; and when the murderer is finally run to ground-still blaming everyone but himself for what he has done-"why" falls into place with "how." -Linda Bridges

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