On This Rockne : A Notre Dame Mystery - Hardcover

McInerny, Ralph

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1568655231 ISBN 13: 9781568655239

Publisher: Doubleday, 1997

Synopsis

On the football-obsessed campus of Notre Dame, Marcus Bramble, a wealthy alum with an unhealthy passion for the sport, says he'll contribute $10 million if it's put toward a memorial to Knute Rockne, the university's legendary football coach. When Madeline Rune, a Notre Dame trustee, is found dead after disparaging remarks about the donation, Bramble, along with Madeline's womanizing husband, is suspected of foul play. But when her husband also turns up dead, the case becomes more impossible than a Hail Mary.

As detective Philip Knight and his brother, brilliant philosophy professor Roger Knight, scour the campus for a killer, they're caught in a high-stakes scrimmage between the mega-bucks donor determined to resurrect Knute Rockne and the Notre Dame academia, dead-set on burying football for good. And in between this bitter campus infighting, the brothers must prevent the murderer's next play before football becomes the ultimate blood sport...

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

Everything's fine at Notre Dame--unless you're losing sleep over the fortunes of the current football program--until megabucks alumnus Marcus Bramble offers the university $10 million for a suitable memorial to legendary coach Knute Rockne. Will the money go to a new stadium, an on-campus mausoleum, or a remake of Knute Rockne, All-American? McInerny, working outside his usual Father Dowling territory (The Tears of Things, 1996, etc.), shows an effortlessly light touch with campus intrigue until trustee Madeline Rune gets herself murdered. Feeling threatened by her estranged husband Stanley, Madeline had asked New York p.i. Philip Knight and his brother, Huneker Professor of Catholic Studies Roger Knight, for help, and now Stanley is the number-one suspect, at least until he gets killed with the same weapon as his fearful ex. But the mystery runs aground in a thousand glittering shoals, as the brothers follow the trail of The Four Winners, a boys' football novel Rockne wrote but never published; The Four Losers, a fictionalized debunking of contemporary Notre Dame football by upstart English prof Henry Hadley; the twisted connections between Madeline's dynastic forebears and the illustrious Catholic university; and a dozen other subplots that have nothing to do with the oddly perfunctory mystery. Still, you've got to have a soft spot for a novel whose police chief describes the investigating officer as ``Purdue. But a good cop.'' -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review:

"A wonderful start to a new series." --Booklist

"[McInerny] shows an effortlessly light touch with campus intrigue." --Kirkus Reviews

"Give McInerny a few more entries, and he'll have readers comparing the Knight Brothers with the best detective duos in the genre." --Booklist

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 1568655231
• ISBN 13: 9781568655239
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 456