The Labcoat: An Eric Berg Mystery

Featuring a laughably implausible sleuth, Soderquist's unsuccessful debut mystery traces a series of equally unlikely murders in academia. Eric Berg's busy life has culminated in a professorship of theology at Mellon University and an assistant chieftainship of police (""big title, no salary"") on campus. The big case comes when Frank Willard, an overweight chemist, dies on the Mellon campus, apparently from a heart attack. Frank was sleeping with a nymphomaniac grad student. His wife, Doris, also has a lover, and, after Frank's death, Doris shows an unseemly haste in getting the deceased cremated. Berg finds traces of cyanide spray on Frank's clothes and starts hunting through the campus for the professor most likely to benefit from the death. Soderquist's prose is grim but has none of the moody bounce of better dark-souled mystery writing. While he fails to develop any character properly, Berg's wife is a particularly short-changed creation. Berg himself, caught in a mild midlife crises, comes off as a pompous moralizer until he gets tangled up with his assistant, Kate, at the rushed and morally unresolved conclusion. The murder solution relies on an improbable series of kills for career advancement and several coincidental links that leave the reader with a solitary suspect--and precious little satisfaction. (Oct.)