Murder In The Museum Of Man - Hardcover

"Extraordinary, I thought, the way a detective's mind must work, the way suspicion gets raised nearly to an art form." So writes Norman de Ratour, the somewhat effete, occasionally waspish, wholly engaging, and eventually victorious hero of this delightful first mystery. Norman is the recording secretary at the Museum of Man, which is attached to Wainscott University in the New England town of Seaboard. (Since Alcorn runs the travel program at the Museum of Cultural and Natural History at Harvard, we might assume that the Museum of Man shares some fictional turf with Alcorn's real place of employment.) Through de Ratour's journals, we follow the progress of various murders, acts of cannibalism (described in the best of taste, of course), suspicious primate experiments, and even a poignant love story, in a book that manages to be touching, exciting, and very funny at the same time.

Alfred Alcorn runs the travel program at the Museum of Cultural and Natural History at Harvard University.