If you're one who sets expectations after reading a synopsis, then you may need to reset yours for PHDEATH by James P. Carse. The back cover calls it a thriller, yet after reading it, it has more the feel of a mystery. The premise sounds fascinating: the murderer sends out a 10- part puzzle that gives clues to the next victim. But the police, Feds, and the committee tasked with solving the killings by the university president can't keep pace with the mastermind behind all this violence. Intriguingly, the reasons for the deaths do come to the forefront at some point, so we have answers for most by the end.

As the mastermind behind the murders, Carse, an emeritus professor himself, obviously had some fun. Many of them are outlandish and unbelievable and yet ... fitting. Where I had trouble is that each puzzle has 10 parts, and each of these parts and clues gets explained in excruciating detail. I'm blind, so I listen to books on my computer or phone, and at some points, I desperately wished I could skim.

Carse gives readers a glimpse of life on campus and the book takes the reader through the school year. The novel also has some cerebral chapters. If you have a fascination for Socrates or cosmology or digging into the depths of the human condition, then you'll enjoy these pages. And, I admit, even for this jaded reader who tends to dive into books to escape the real world, it has its place.

All that aside, the reveal at the end — and it's a beauty — almost made up for all of meticulous puzzle clues and slow sections in which I had to use my brain. Fans of a more literary mystery will relish this novel, but if you need an action-packed thriller, choose something else and come back to this one when you're in the right frame of mind to appreciate it.

Book Summary

PhDeath is a fast-paced thriller set in a major university in a major city on a square. The faculty finds itself in deadly intellectual combat with the anonymous Puzzler. Along with teams of US Military Intelligence and the city's top detective and aided by the Puzzle Master of The New York Times, their collective brains are no match for the Puzzler's perverse talents.

Carse, Emeritus Professor himself at a premier university in a major city on a square shows no mercy in his creation of the seemingly omniscient Puzzler, who through a sequence of atrocities beginning and ending with the academic year, turns up one hidden pocket of moral rot after another: flawed research, unabashed venality, ideological rigidity, pornographic obsessions, undue political and corporate influence, subtle schemes of blackmail, the penetration of national and foreign intelligence agencies, brazen violation of copyrights, even the production and sale of addictive drugs.