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Title: The Memorial Hall Murder

Author: Jane Langton

Narrator: Mark Ashby

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 13 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-21-12

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Mysteries & Thrillers, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

When a bomb kills the most popular man at Harvard, the entire faculty is suspect

An explosion rocks the foundations of Harvard Universitys stately Memorial Hall. Built a century ago to honor alumni who died defending the Union in the Civil War, the hall is a focal point of the campus. Now it is a crime scene. A corpulent body is found inside, decapitated by the blast. The dead man is Hamilton Dow, conductor of the school orchestra and one of the most beloved men on campus. The universitys president, James Cheever, couldnt be more pleased.

Dow had opposed every one of Cheevers attempts to improve and enlarge Harvard, and this terrible accident means that Cheevers path to complete domination of the campus is clear. But was it an accident? Homer Kelly, Harvard professor and occasional sleuth, is not so sure. Cheever was not the only man on campus who wanted Dow dead, and as Homer looks for the culprit he finds a terrible secret behind the bombing that turned the Civil War memorial into a tomb.

Members Reviews:

Good Reading from a Fine Writer

I have read many of Jane Langton's books over the years and re-read a fair number. In terms of the thoroughness with which she describes the scene of the crime as well as the massing of characters and distinctiveness of situation, it is somewhat different from her customary efforts. It is certainly the book most deeply rooted in the clerical seminary which over the years came to think of itself as the premiere institution of secular higher learning in the country if not the world. Whatever the extent to which others might question the validity of the self-congratulatory attitude, the author accepts the claim but invents for the reader a rather different image of its administrative leadership and the efficiency of its lower echelon of employees. The major focus of this amusing although suspenseful view of campus life is a Great Hall in which not only is music produced but because of the nature of the vast building and the largess of its principle faculty occupant hospitality is given to myriads of odd activities and people who find shelter in its multiplicity of small offices. The book opens on an explosion which has taken place in the Great Hall, beheading the benign conductor of the orchestra, and forcing closure of some of the offices in the rabbit warren which is the basement floor. The reader soon learns that while the world believes that orotund figure to be dead, he is, in truth alive but injured and trapped in a dark cell of a room which has been labelled by searchers as unoccupied. Major element of suspense number one, will he survive the wait to be found. Major element of suspense number two: will the villain or villains who created the explosion strike again. This question can be subsumed under the more explanatory query: will Homer Kelly, who, with his wife and fellow visiting faculty member at Harvard, are on the scene, find the otherwise doomed Orchestra Leader and will they discover and bring to justice the miscreant (or miscreants) responsible for the crime before they strike again..if that is their intention.

There is more detailed examination of the setting than became customary for the author in later books and less emphasis on the heroes heroine, nonetheless, I found it interesting (as I did on my initial reading a decade or two ago) and did experience the sense of urgency for the hero to get on track which is the author's intent.