Mystery & Crime, Fiction Subjects, Peoples & Cultures - Fiction

Quaker Witness

Name: Quaker Witness
Author: Irene Allen
ISBN: 9780312972851

by Irene Allen

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Overview

Meet Elizabeth Elliot. A Quaker whose quiet wisdom and determined will are powerful tools of detection.

In the world of paleontology, the name of the game is research. Some would even kill for credentials. So it comes as no surprise—and as quiet satisfaction for many—when an eminent scientist is found murdered in his Harvard lab. The prime suspect is a beautiful graduate student, the professor's only female advisee, who has just filed sexual harassment charges against him.

Harvard is determined to close the case and convict the student—when Elizabeth Elliot, lifelong Quaker and Clerk of the Meetinghouse in Cambridge, steps into the fray at the student's request. Elizabeth is convinced of her innocence. Her only hope to clear the young woman is to penetrate Harvard's sanctum sanctorum to find the devious killer—knowing full well that brilliant minds are often the most dangerous...

Synopsis

Meet Elizabeth Elliot. A Quaker whose quiet wisdom and determined will are powerful tools of detection.

In the world of paleontology, the name of the game is research. Some would even kill for credentials. So it comes as no surprise--and as quiet satisfaction for many--when an eminent scientist is found murdered in his Harvard lab. The prime suspect is a beautiful graduate student, the professor's only female advisee, who has just filed sexual harassment charges against him.

Harvard is determined to close the case and convict the student--when Elizabeth Elliot, lifelong Quaker and Clerk of the Meetinghouse in Cambridge, steps into the fray at the student's request. Elizabeth is convinced of her innocence. Her only hope to clear the young woman is to penetrate Harvard's sanctum sanctorum to find the devious killer--knowing full well that brilliant minds are often the most dangerous...

About the Author, Irene Allen

Irene Allen is a geologist who was educated at Princeton and Harvard. She lives in her hometown in Washington State.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Elizabeth Elliot, a widow and clerk of the Quaker Meeting House in Cambridge, Mass., was introduced in the quietly effective novel Quaker Silence . Near the beginning of this return engagement, Elizabeth listens to the anguished outpourings of a young woman Ph.D. student in paleontology at Harvard. Janet Stevens has endured escalating sexual harassment from her male faculty advisor. Unable to put up with it any longer, she has filed a complaint at the university and is sure her hopes of a career in science are over. When the professor is murdered in his lab, Janet becomes the prime suspect. Evidence mounts against her, and Elizabeth, with the help of a friend who is a secretary in the paleontology department, begins her own investigations. Though the dialogue is sometimes slightly stilted, Allen delivers a thoughtful and suspenseful story that examines issues of personal morality and social responsibility, even as it exposes the ambition and ruthlessness depicted as rampant in Harvard's hallowed labs and administration buildings. Elizabeth, who questions her own motives while probing the actions of others, is a fully dimensioned, appealing heroine. Literary Guild selection. (Nov.)