Synopsis
From Booker Prize nominee Michael Collins comes "a wonderfully creepy murder mystery" (People), about a novelist whose last hope for fame may be the deepest secret in his past.
For E. Robert Pendleton, a professor clinging to tenure and living in the shambles of his once-bright literary career, death seems to be the only remaining option. But his suicide attempt fails, and during his long convalescence, a novel is discovered hidden in his basement: a brilliant, semi-autobiographical story with a gruesome child murder at its core.
The publication of Scream causes a storm of publicity and raises questions about its content—in particular, about the uncanny resemblance between Pendleton's fictional crime and a real-life, unresolved local murder. How did Pendleton know the case so well? And why did he bury Scream in his basement? A rare blend of suspense, humor and insight, Death of a Writer is "dark, disturbing and damnably good." (Baltimore Sun).
The New York Times - Marilyn Stasio
Michael Collins tears into literary academe with great comic gusto in Death of a Writer, using the contorted plot of a campus murder mystery to send up the circuitous thinking and laborious scheming that passes for scholarship in the fame-obsessed English department of an insular liberal arts college in Indiana.