Murder in a Minor Key

Albert, who is given no surname, is a famous composer and reclusive professor on the faculty of ``the School'' near Boston. Utterly absorbed in his music, he is drawn unwillingly, and unwittingly, into the internecine world of academia in this debut of considerable charm. Andrew Tewksbury, head of the Archeology Department and the closest thing Albert has to a friend, is sentenced to prison for murdering his avowed enemy, Classics professor Harlan Glenly. Convinced of his friend's innocence and encouraged by Melissa Bjork, Tewksbury's lawyer, Albert has begun the terrifying process of chatting up his colleagues for information about Glenly when he is felled by a blow to the head. By coincidence, he ends up in the same hospital as Tewksbury, who has slashed his wrists in his cell. With the imaginative assistance of his teenaged hospital roommate, Albert gains access to Tewksbury's guarded room and sets in motion a series of events that vindicates the innocent even as it leads to other deaths, including one that comes painfully close to the shy, bumbling composer. Although Crossman's local police could be outmaneuvered by a freshman, not to mention an absentminded professor, he creates an offbeat, sympathetic sleuth who meanders innocently through this tale like a lamb through a pack of wolves. Bravo. Encore. (Feb.)