The Professor (English Edition)

On the seventh day, Professor WALTER SPINKS crashes a colleague’s retirement party with an antique Civil War pistol. Recounted in flashback in the style of dramatic monologue, Walter details the events of the week that threaten to expose a lifetime of secrets; least of all, his true identity.
Once hailed as America’s greatest Psychopath Hunter, the Professor of Criminal Psychology, known for his signature cravat and dapper dress-sense, is looking for professional redemption. During the aftermath of the Oklahoma City Bombing, Walter is interviewed on national television as an expert on psychopathy. Minutes into the interview, Walter—triggered by the reporter’s asking “why” an individual would commit such heinous acts—goes off-script, erupting into a tirade on societal culpability before comparing the American people, desperate for answers, to, “an army blinded by the cult of so-called religious superiority.” By the interview’s conclusion, Walter’s reputation as the most formidable defender against America’s psychopaths rapidly transforms into the “godless defender of evil.”
The novel begins with national tragedy in a Prologue dated September 11, 2001. However, seemingly having learned his lesson from commenting on Timothy McVeigh, Walter abstains from commenting on the tragedy and instead sees opportunity in a new serial killer who has murdered six Massachusetts’ women over the last six months; the sixth of whom is discovered on the morning of September 11 in the townhouse next to Walter’s own. The body of the victim bears all of the markings of the Hysteria Killer’s m.o.—body facedown on the kitchen floor with the victim’s reproductive organs re-assembled atop her lower back. Fixed to the left ovary is a grainy photograph, which Walter recognizes as a photograph of Augustine, the late-Victorian heroine of Hysteria. Prior to studying psychopathy, Walter began his career researching Hysteria—a sign he takes to mean that the killer is communicating directly with him.
The novel is set against the backdrop of Amherst, MA and is broken into seven sections by the days leading up to the Hysteria Killer’s arrest. Picking up in the last week of October, 2001 Walter is visited by an old friend, the Sheriff of Hampshire County and suspected ‘dirty cop,’ EARLE GILLIS. Facing a representative recall the following week, Earle is eager to name a suspect for the Hysteria killings by Friday. Earle uses the knowledge that only he possesses—Walter’s true identity—as blackmail for Walter to produce a suspect. Walter reluctantly agrees and calls upon his assistant GNAT and his two student protégés, JENSEN and BELINDA, to assist him in naming the Hysteria Killer. From here, Walter executes a labyrinthine mystery that only he holds the answer to – that is, if he can remember where he placed his antique pistol.

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