The Savage Professor

Prof. Anthony Landau, the caustic narrator of this smart, dark romp from Roper (Mexico Days), is the ultimate outsider: half British, half Jewish, and a tourist when it comes to American culture. He%E2%80%99s also a renowned epidemiologist, an ardent skirt-chaser past his prime, and a resident of self-righteous ultra-left hipster Berkeley, Calif. One evening Landau returns to his house in the Berkeley Hills to find his former lover and colleague, Samantha Bernstein Beevors, who tried to ruin him professionally, cold, naked, and quite dead in his bed. During the subsequent investigation, his lawyer hates him for speaking to the press and police, and he becomes privy to a past cuckolding of sorts by his distant son. He%E2%80%99s been neither charged nor cleared by the law when his housekeeper, a post-doc student, and other friends and acquaintances come to grisly ends, but it%E2%80%99s clear someone is trying to frame him as a serial killer. The rhythm of the evidence trail builds to a crescendo, and the conclusion is as satisfying as the book%E2%80%99s wonderfully acerbic tone. (Apr.)