Final Exam

by P. F. Kluge

Overview

A mystery novel set in a small, rural liberal arts community, by the author of Eddie and the Cruisers, Alma Mater, and Biggest Elvis, among other works of fiction and nonfiction. Who is the killer roaming a quiet campus, terrorizing students and locals alike? And what is his ultimate aim? Questions of character and purpose resonate throughout this suspense novel, reflecting off ivied walls and the dark barns of an academic community under siege.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781880977132
Publisher:	Watusi
Publication date:	01/28/2005
Edition description:	XOXOX PRESS
Pages:	252
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Novelist, journalist and teacher, P.F. Kluge is Writer in Residence at Kenyon College. His six previous novels include Eddie And The Cruisers and Biggest Elvis. His nonfiction books include The Edge of Paradise: America in Micronesia and Alma Mater, an account of a year in the life of Kenyon College. Two films, Dog Day Afternoon and Eddie And The Cruisers, have been based on his work. His journalism appears in National Geographic Traveler, where he is a contributing editor, and elsewhere. A native of Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, Kluge lives in Gambier, Ohio with his wife, Pamela Hollie.

Editorial Reviews

Final Exam dazzles from the first page and intrigues from the first shrewd twist of its plot. It is a superb mystery novel...a superb evocation of a unique place at a dangerous time, and of people whose lives hang suddenly in the balance. The suspense is carefully and smartly calibrated, but what makes Final Exam singular is its tough and witty portrait of an academic community under siege both from a malign force outside it and from within, as its own insidious histories and bitter secrets threaten to destroy it as surely as the killer who moves like a shadow across the campus. Like some of my favorite movies, Final Exam uses a classic genre and twists it into something new and compelling and memorable. —Martin Scorsese, Film Director and Producer

P.F. Kluge, who documented the intricacies of life in a small liberal arts college with brilliance, insight and compassion in his classic nonfiction work Alma Mater, now proves he can do the same thing in a work of fiction. Final Exam is technically a mystery novel, but it is also a deft and gimlet-eyed look at the inner world of the liberal arts college, a place Kluge portrays as well as any author writing today. —Paul Goldberger, contributing editor at Vanity Fair and author of Up From Zero: Politics, Architecture and the Rebuilding of New York and, most recently, Ballpark: Baseball in the American City

From the Publisher