Murder In Academia

   

Someone, a Catholic, with talent for narrative, could re-write any one of Mary Higgins Clark’s suspense novels, with this kind of a plot: 

 

A professor of physics is murdered by the Dean of the College of Physics at the instigation of the President of the University. A cast of characters includes at least five full university professors in the science of Physics, Chemistry, Geology, Biochemistry and Microbiology. These men and women (must include at least 2 women) – discuss the evidences for and against the position of the murdered man. The murdered man was a professor of astrophysics, and had developed a detailed cosmology that unified all the sciences, and proved by evidential exposure, that evolution was false at every point and could no longer be sustained by anyone devoted to the truth. But this professor’s method over the years (he is now in his sixties when murdered) – had been simply to present a very positive cosmology –using the very discoveries – even of quantum theory – that had the side effects of making Einstein’s relativity un-sustainable.

 

But the truth must be supressed at all costs – thinks the president. Therefore, the murderer must be one of the major professors – the dean is the perfect one…a major professor of geology – historical geology –no admission of catastrophes – an expert in radiometric dating of the rocks. If he can be persuaded to commit the evil act and save the university with all of its research grants and reputation as a core facility for evolutionary biology. As usual in a Clark suspense story, there must be outsiders with some connection to the sciences or a connection acquired. Bring in either an aspiring student, female and/or standard Clark sleuths, Willy and Alvirah Meehan. It wouldn’t take Alvirah long to grasp the main theories – creationist vs. evolutionist, involved and to see their significance, not only for academia, but for the world at large. Why, what would the kindergarteners do without dinosaurs and the whole prehistoric world of the evolutionary vision of things?

 

The murder itself will have to be of the more subtle Agatha Christie kind, say, by some exotic poison concocted in the lab. The dean, by the way, is also the major professor of microbiology and ingeniously invents an absolutely non-detectable and non-traceable poison, that blends immediately with the digestive system, and causes massive and instantly lethal internal collapse, by explosion of the circulatory system of the major blood vessels. Death due to massive cerebral hemorrahage will be the irrefutable medical diagnosis from the autopsy. The poison was imbibed at a dinner of the professors to discuss some new theories having to do with membrane (M) theories in astrophysics, which the professor to be murdered is currently studying. (Dr. Stephen Barr would be a perfect consultant for this novel which, by the way, is guaranteed to be a great fund-raiser for the creationist cause – if we can get a publisher like Doubleday or Simon & Schuster to feature it.)

 

(Incidentally, we might also consult Mrs. Clark herself. At 85, she is still going strong and would only need to be supplied with the scientific evidences. The rest could be left to her very fertile imagination.) And there must be at least two sub-plots. These usually involve some long-lost or long-forgotten biological parents. But I am seriously thinking of ways in which to make a Clark novel REALLY Catholic. This could involve the return of some person to the Faith from which they had lapsed, (shades of Evelyn Waugh!) Real conversions, as to Catholic creationism, due to the discovery of how deceit has been used in the Church to cover up the real truths of real science. And we need some really Catholic death scenes and death anticipations, full of real fears and hopes concerning Hell, Heaven and Purgatory. Clark is simply non-Catholic when it comes to death! Also, Clark’s novels always have characters who are divorced and re-married and apparently in full communion with the Catholic Church. This novel must remedy that impression.

 

Some years ago, probably in the 2000’s, there was a mystery, suspense novel written and published by a Protestant author, wherein the head of the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, was murdered because he had become a creationist and was going to go public with the evidences. Unfortunately, I cannot remember either the author or the title of the book – and it is in hardcover and it is somewhere in my library – which is in storage. Look it up.

 

This is the hottest issue on the current world stage, and is surely the most important one for Catholics. Otherwise, as pioneer Australian Wallace Johnson used to say, why the desperate efforts to keep it under wraps? An awful, awesome amount of money and power is at stake for an awful lot of people in high places….

 

If only Mrs. Mary Higgins Clark herself, would become an Apostle of Creation and make this kind of novel to be her Swan Song …her last Will and Testament as a Catholic in 2013-2017…the anniversary of Our Lady’s apparitions at Fatima!