Mon 28 Jul 2008
Now, this is taking the rivalry a little too far. In the latest novel from Amherst alum Harlan Coben, the villain is an Eph:
The detective comes into the story because there has been a particularly brutal, sadistic murder that, from all appearances, has nothing to do with all the other conflicts the author explores. And when a woman vanishes after a shopping trip to Target, the police wonder if a serial killer is on the loose.
The reader knows (but the police don’t, at least initially) that there’s a strong connection between the murder and the disappearance of the shopper, although the exact nature of that connection unravels slowly.
In the meantime, the reader learns a great deal about the backgrounds of the killer (oddly enough, a graduate of prestigious Williams College) and his partner, a woman who was traumatized by the brutality that accompanied the disintegration of her former country, Yugoslavia.
Perhaps it is time for Stephen Sondheim to write a sequel to Sweeney Todd set in the five college area?
July 28th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
At least Coben’s just a hack, not a plagarist like his fellow Herstie Dan Brown.
July 28th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Say what you will, but there was definitely something in the water at the Amherst English department in the mid 1980’s, when those two plus writers David “Never Met a Footnote I didn’t Like” Foster Wallace, Rafael Campo, Mark Costello, Chris Bohjalian, and Susannah Grant were all on campus.
What is doubly interesting is that, around the same time Amherst produced a glut of fiction writers, Williams graduated a whole slew of pulitzer prize winners (see the Wikipedia alumni page …).
July 28th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
I haven’t read this book, but I have always thought that Patrick Bateman should have been portrayed as a Williams graduate.
July 28th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
There probably is (or will be) a supercriminal who went to graduated from Williams..
July 28th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
*and/or graduated from.
July 31st, 2008 at 6:20 pm
If I were writing a novel about Williams I would set it in Amherst tho the astute reader would know that it was all really happenening in the Village Beautiful.