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Loading... Death of an Old Goat (1974)by Robert Barnard
   None No current Talk conversations about this book.   ritaer | Jul 22, 2021 |   ) lucybrown | Sep 27, 2015 | ) lucybrown | Sep 27, 2015 | ) lucybrown | Sep 27, 2015 | Professor Wickham, also of Oxford but chair, now, at the University in Drummondale, is Professor Blevin-Smith's host for this latest stop on his tour. He's got problems of his own: a wannabe social climber of a wife, a staff who are indifferent at best and at worst are downright stupid. And lucky Wickham--in addition to picking his doddering peer up at the railway station and depositing him at his motel, he gets to host a cocktail party for him as well the next night. Poor Professor Blevin-Smith. After an interminable train ride, a dinner every bit as primitive as he had dreaded, and an utterly unsatisfying night's sleep, the poor old goat has to deliver his lecture on Mrs. Gaskell to an audience of assistant professors and lecturers compelled to attend. No wonder that when he misses the briefest of beats somewhere in the middle of the lecture he picks up at exactly the same point...but in his Jane Austen lecture, leaving those few attendees paying even the least bit of attention either scratching their heads perplexedly or tittering behind their hands to one another. But even though he bored the entire English Department to tears, and even though he wandered through the cocktail party in his honor in a fog of sleeping pills and booze, and even though he ended the night by engaging in a verbal tiff with his host over the quality of his experience so far, still, the poor old goat does not deserve to have his throat slit from ear to ear while he sleeps that night. Everyone's a suspect because no one has any motive at all to kill the professor. The investigation falls into the hands of the less-than-interested Police Inspector Royle, who, in addition to never having had to actually solve a crime before, has a full docket of midday trysts with housewives in his jurisdiction. Death of an Old Goat is light and airy, sending up equally the academics, the local gentry, and the police. A satisfying read for a rainy afternoon. (  )2  BeckyJG | Apr 10, 2011 | no reviews | add a review
Professor Belville-Smith had bored university audiences in England with the same lecture for fifty years. Now he was crossing the Australian continent, doing precisely the same. Never before had the reaction been so extreme, however, for shortly after an undistinguished appearance at Drummondale University, the doddering old professor is found brutally murdered. As Police Inspector Royle (who had never actually had to solve a crime before) probes the possible motives of the motley crew of academics who drink their was through the dreary days at Drummondale and as he investigates the bizarre behaviour of some worthy locals, a hilarious, highly satirical portrait of life down under emerges. 'The perfect gem, one you wouldn't change a word of' "Los Angeles Times" No library descriptions found. 
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction 1900- 1901-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.39)
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