Book Club discusses "Death of a Writer"

Last month, the book club discussed Michael Collins's Death of a Writer and after a delay, here's an abbreviated post of the book discussion. Collins is an Irish born writer and international ultra-distance runner--Death is his eighth and newest book. Here's a Googled pix of Collins.

This novel has a college setting when a severely-ill professor's hidden work is discovered and becomes a publishing sensation when promoted by a friendly graduate student and a rival writer. The professor's work documents the acts of a murder which, upon closer examination, appear to match the circumstances of a local unsolved murder. Is it remotely possible that the professor was involved in the actual murder? The book is largely split with the Professor Pendleton's story and the investigation by a cold case detective.

Our attitude about the book was *somewhat* mixed. Two of us somewhat liked the book. Two people didn't choose to finish it and the rest didn't care for the book. And one cleverly summarized the book was repetitive and pretentious (plus other term I forgot).

The mystery story was fine but the extra storyline with some characters led to sordid paths that appeared to just dead-end. In fact, none of the characters had a truly cheerful life although there was one--the graduate student, Adi--you would hope to see succeed.

The story of Pendleton and his hardships give the novel a good start but the longer it goes, the more it appears to drag on. As one asked if the novel had any humor (well, dark humor then as promised in the book jacket), we found very little in the story.

Ultimately, when asked if we could recommend the book to any one--none of us could say "yes."