title: An Academic Death (Lambert and Hook Mysteries)
author:  J M Gregson 
description: When Matthew Upson, a popular history lecturer at the University of Gloucestershire, mysteriously disappears in this middling police procedural from British author Gregson (An Unsuitable Death), Upson's wife, Liz, makes it clear to Det. Sgt. Bert Hook and Supt. John Lambert that she doesn't care whether or not they find him. It seems to be a standard missing person case until three young boys find a disfigured body with a bullet in its head, and Liz confirms it's Upson. In their search for the killer amid the author's generic halls of British higher education, Hook and Lambert discover that the victim had indulged in an adulterous affair or two. At the same time, the pair are guilty of numerous oversights: they fail to ask what Upson was wearing when he vanished; they don't consider who profits from his death; and they neglect to look closely at Liz's financial position. Eventually, after uncovering a sizable balance in a bank account that Upson concealed, they learn that he dealt drugs to students. More violence ensues a student who was a pusher is murdered, and Hook and Lambert must interrogate the drug-dealing hierarchy's top dogs, who may be responsible for both murders. While Gregson develops the characters of Hook and Lambert, he skimps on the unsavory collection of faculty members they investigate, none of whom is sympathetic. The action moves swiftly, but will be quickly forgotten once readers turn the last page. </P><P>Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.</P>
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  # An Open Mind: William James
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Walter Lippmann
  
  
  This page copyright © 2002 Munsey's.
  
  
  http://www.munseys.com
  
  WITHIN a week of the death of Professor William James of Harvard
  
  
  University, the newspapers had it that Mr. M. S. Ayer of Boston had
  
  
  received a message from his spirit. This news item provoked the
  
  
  ridicule of the people who don't believe in ghosts, but the joke was on
  
  
  Mr. Ayer of Boston. When, however, it was reported that Professor James
  
  
  himself had agreed to communicate with this world, if he could, and, in
  
  
  order to test the reports, had left a sealed message to be opened at a
  
  
  certain definite time after his death, the incredulous gasped at the
  
  
  professor's amazing "credulity."
  
  
  William James wasn't "credulous." He was simply open-minded. Maybe
  
  
  the soul of man is immortal. The professors couldn't prove it wasn't,
  
  
  so James was willing to open his mind to evidence. He was willing to
  
  
  hunt 