The Bones of Bascom Hall

by Betsy Draine, Michael Hinden

Overview

Campus police at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are baffled by the discovery of human remains in the attic of the administration building. Drawn into the investigation, visiting professor Nora Barnes connects the bones to the Vietnam-era bombing of Sterling Hall. But someone doesn’t want her probing the past. She’s side-swiped by a car while riding a bicycle and almost crushed in the art library’s motorized book stacks. Meanwhile, her high-spirited husband, Toby Sandler, is hot on the trail of lost architectural plans drafted by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Inspired by an event that traumatized Madison and shocked the nation, this absorbing novel blends fact and fiction and is sure to delight both mystery enthusiasts and UW alumni.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299349745
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	11/19/2024
Series:	A Nora Barnes and Toby Sandler Mystery
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Betsy Draine and Michael Hinden are the coauthors of Murder in Lascaux, The Body in Bodega Bay, Death on a Starry Night, and The Dead of Achill Island, the first four mystery novels featuring Nora Barnes and Toby Sandler. They also coauthored the memoir A Castle in the Backyard: The Dream of a House in France and translated The Walnut Cookbook by Jean-Luc Toussaint. They are professors emeriti of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.


Betsy Draine and Michael Hinden are the coauthors of Murder in Lascaux, The Body in Bodega Bay, Death on a Starry Night, and The Dead of Achill Island, the first four mystery novels featuring Nora Barnes and Toby Sandler. They also coauthored the memoir A Castle in the Backyard: The Dream of a House in France and translated The Walnut Cookbook by Jean-Luc Toussaint. They are professors emeriti of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Editorial Reviews

2024-09-12
The spirit of Frank Lloyd Wright hovers over art historian Nora Barnes’ visit to the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Nora has come to Madison on a summer faculty exchange, joined by Toby Sanders, her antiquarian husband. When a cistern under the roof of Bascom Hall unexpectedly opens and drenches a self-important speaker, Det. Diane Young of the UW–Madison Police finds that the cistern contained a number of human bones. Could they possibly be the remains of Theo Kearn, a student activist who’s been on the lam ever since a 1970 campus bombing that left one person dead? The forensic evidence strongly suggests to Nora that the bones are Theo’s, but Maureen Day, Theo’s college girlfriend—now conveniently returned to campus to audit Nora’s course on 19th-century French painting—is convinced that Theo is still alive and that she spotted him quite recently. As Nora seeks to trump the interventions of overbearing, incompetent FBI agent Daryl Whelk and dodge the increasingly determined attempts of eccentric, self-protective Wright expert Prof. Magnus Arp to prevent her from being offered a long-term appointment, evidence about those bones mounts on both sides of the ledger until Theo assumes the magisterial ambiguity of Schrödinger’s cat, who’s duly cited along with dozens of other allusions that will warm the hearts of academic readers and keep the brightly written conversations afloat.

Be warned: Identifying the corpse poses a more interesting mystery than identifying the killer.

Kirkus Reviews