โ Scribed by Alfred Alcorn
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
"_The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man_ is no less giddy, but in a dry, snide style. Uppity Wainscott University is caught on Alfred Alcorn's blade when two antagonistic academics are found on the floor of the genetics lab, victims of an industrial-strength aphrodisiac and done to death by sexual excess. The Marx Brothers would be very welcome at this quirky institution." _The New York Times Book Review
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Praise for the first Norman de Ratour Mystery, Murder in the Museum of Man
"An adroit, hilarious send-up." The New Yorker
"A stylish, fiendish detective story." The New York Times Book Review
"Readers will be choked with laughter." The Boston Herald
A "wonderfully funny and surprisingly suspenseful story." The Chicago Tribune
"Alcorn's unexpected hybrid blends academic spoofery . . . and a murder mystery, serving it up with just the right balance of innocence, subtle malevolence and cheeky irony." _Publishers Weekly
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When Professor Humberto Ossmann and Dr. Clematis Woodley, who heartily despised each other in life, are found together in a mortal embrace, Norman de Ratour knows that evil once again stalks the hallowed precincts of the Museum of Man. It has been several years since the museum was wracked by what became known as the cannibal murders. Many of the same characters Malachy Morin, Lieutenant Tracy of the Seaboard Police Department, Constance Brattle of Wainscott University's Oversight Committee, the Reverend Alfie Lopes, Elsbeth, now Norman's beloved wife, and Israel Landes, his devoted friend play their parts as an unseemly conspiracy unfolds: A powerful aphrodisiac under development in the Genetics Lab is being used as a murder weapon.Norman, now director of the museum, figuratively dons his deerstalker hat to help the Seaboard police find and bring the miscreants to justice. The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man takes black comedy to philosophical heights, exploring the human (and inhuman) condition and seeking to redeem it through humor in a novel that combines parody and murder mystery suspense.
A Norman De Ratour Mystery
๐ SIMILAR VOLUMES
### From Publishers Weekly At the start of Alcorn's uneven third Norman de Ratour mystery (after 2009's *The**Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man*), Norman, the Museum of Man's director and the book's bloviating narrator, discovers a murdered man in a parked car near the museum, located in the
When Professor Humberto Ossmann and Dr. Clematis Woodley, who heartily despised each other in life, are found together in a mortal embrace, Norman de Ratour knows that evil once again stalks the hallowed precincts of the Museum of Man. It has been several years since the museum was wracked by what b
Dean Cranston Fessing, dispatched from Wainscott University to investigate the finances of the neighburing Museum of Man, has been murdered. Not only that, but his grisly remains bear the unmistakable mark of preparation as haute cusine. Norman de Ratour, museum recording secretary and unlikely sleu
Dean Cranston Fessing, dispatched from Wainscott University to investigate the finances of the neighburing Museum of Man, has been murdered. Not only that, but his grisly remains bear the unmistakable mark of preparation as haute cusine. Norman de Ratour, museum recording secretary and unlikely sleu
Bracketts, an Elizabethan house near the town of Fethering, is about to be turned into a museum. Once the home of celebrated poet Esmund Chadleigh, it has been decided that it should now become a shrine to his life and poetry. But the transition from house to museum is running far from smoothly, and
When Professor Julius Arnell breathes his last in the hushed atmosphere of the British Museum Reading Room, it looks like death from natural causes. Who, after all, would have cause to murder a retired academic whose life was devoted to Elizabethan literature? Inspector Shelley's suspicions are arou