The Transcendental Murder

Scholarly infighting can get a lot more violent than most outsiders realize, but usually that violence is confined to the printed page. Not so in Concord, Mass., where the arrival of Homer Kelly, an expert on the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, has stirred up passions concerning a manuscript that may or may not have been written by Henry David Thoreau. Things come to a head during the town's annual re-enactment of Paul Revere's famous ride, when one of the 'Minutemen' turns up dead, still in full Revolutionary regalia. Accustomed to little more than the odd stolen bicycle, the local police are way over their head, but Kelly in this, his first outing proves as gifted at sleuthing as he is at scholarship.