Harvard must be a light bulb for pulp fiction moths. Over the years, Erich Segal’s Love Story, Pam Thomas-Brown’s A Darker Shade of Crimson, Jane Harvard’s The Student Body and hundreds of other not-quite-Faulkner caliber books have been set at Harvard. Now Carlotta Carlyle, the red-headed, fast-talking Boston detective and long-running serial mystery protagonist, is walking the campus beat.
In Linda Barnes’ newest novel, Deep Pockets, Carlyle investigates the blackmail of a Harvard Medical School professor, Wilson Chaney. After prying into the suicide of an undergraduate with whom he has an affair, Chaney is mysteriously blackmailed and threatened. Private eye Carlyle untangles the web between Chaney and his colleagues, his wife and the undergraduate’s ex-con ex-boyfriend. The book deals with lies and intrigue; lo and behold, the path to truth is fraught with hidden danger. Ultimately, Carlyle digs too deep and ends up in a fix herself.
Deep Pockets’ twists and romance ring a little too close to home; readers might find the famed professor-saucy undergrad subplot a tad familiar. But Barnes swears “there was no particular Harvard hanky-panky in my mind.” Rather, she explains, “College is a time when a student can leave home, go to a new city, make new friends…omit entire sections of a life. Invent an entire history.”
Barnes also says, “Skillful liars intrigue me”—accordingly, her fictional Harvard is rife with them. After reading Deep Pockets, Britton R. Tullo ’06 comments, “I think Harvard could use more scandal. But maybe not scandal like this.”
But although no particular tryst inspired the story, Barnes did base the book partially on the story of former Harvard student Gina Grant. After the administration discovered that Grant failed to tell admissions officers she had murdered her mother in her application, she was expelled.
Harvard is developing a firm corner on the high-drama university-set frothy fiction market. In order to avoid this literary legacy, Barnes advises future scribes: “Set it at Yale.”
