THE LETTER KILLETH

Unacceptable college behavior.

Not only has Notre Dame become intellectually promiscuous, letting a blabbermouth lecher preach atheism, but it’s about to raze the University Club, giving retired old codgers no place to complain. So its deep-pocketed alumni plan to sit on their assets until the University hires Charlie Weis to restore the football team to glory. Unfortunately, Coach is one of four to receive bomb threats in their mailboxes. Campus Security is alerted to the threats, cut and pasted from bits of the radical student newspaper Via Media, but since their main experience is issuing parking citations, p.i. Phil Knight (Irish Gilt, 2005, etc.) is also asked to help. He’s barely through the door before Raul Izquierdo’s trash bin is set ablaze, his car blown up and his life snuffed out by strangulation. Whodunit? The man collected enemies the way Weiss’s team collected yardage. Professor Oscar Wack loathed him; conservative alumni were appalled by his impiety; and husbands detested him for implying he’d bedded their wives. Campus Security, home to several employees who couldn’t get past the Notre Dame admissions committee, isn’t keen on sharing information with Phil or his rotund brother, Professor Roger. And the aspiring bomber is still out there.

The plot leapfrogs from satire to farce, but you’ve got to admire a writer who can evoke the frigid South Bend winter so powerfully that you reach for another sweater between chapters.