The Spire

By Richard North Patterson  

I came across this author years ago but didn't really enjoy whatever book it was. That was 20 years ago, now I was looking through a variety of authors as I was perusing through the library waiting for my boy to choose a couple of books. I came across the author again, but it was the combination of recognising the author and finding a book about about a school. It intrigued me.  It's been a while since I enjoyed a murder mystery book like this. It's the story of Mark who is invited back as president to clear up a financial crisis but he's draw into investigating afresh the murder that took place years ago when he was at the school as a student. There were so many twists and turns. It kept me turning the pages, right through the Christmas holidays.

Synopsis

Mark Darrow grew up in a small Ohio town with no real advantages beyond his intelligence and his athletic ability. But thanks to the intervention of Lionel Farr, a professor at Caldwell, the local college, Dallow became an excellent student and , later, a superb trial lawyer. Now Farr asks his still-youthful protege for a life-altering favour. An embezzlement scandal has threatened Caldwell's very existence - would Darrow consider becoming its new president?
Darrow accepts, but returning to his alma master opens old wounds. Sixteen years ago, on the night of his greatest triumph as Caldwell's star quarterback, he discovered the body of a black female student named Angela Hall at the base of the Spire, the bell tower that dominates the leafy campus. His best friend, Steve Tillman, was charged with Angela's murder and sent to prison for life. But now, as Darrow begins the daunting taskof leading Caldwell, he discovers that thecase against his friend left crucial questions unanswered. Despite his new obligations - and his deepening attachment to lionel Farr's beautiful though troubled daughter - Darrow begins in own inquiry into the murder. Soon he becomes convinced that Angela's killer is still at large, but only when another mysterious death occurs does he understand that his own life is at risk.

Author

Richard North Patterson is an American novelist of legal thrillers. Before he was an author, Patterson practiced law until he retired to become a full-time writer in 1993. By that time, he had already written several novels. Mr. Patterson studied fiction writing with Jesse Hill Ford at the University of Alabama at Birmingham; his first short story was published in The Atlantic Monthly; and his first novel, The Lasko Tangent, won an Edgar Allen Poe Award in 1979.

Other novels by the author

Christopher Paget
The Lasko Tangent (1979)
Degree of Guilt (1993)
Eyes of a Child (1995)
Conviction (2005)

Tony Lord
Private Screening (1985)
Silent Witness (1997)

Kerry Kilcannon
No Safe Place (1998)
Protect and Defend (2000)
Balance of Power (2003)

Martha's Vineyard
Loss of Innocence (2013)
Fall From Grace (2012)
Eden in Winter (2014)

Other novels
The Outside Man (1981)
Escape the Night (1983)
Caroline Masters (1995)
Dark Lady (1999)
Exile (2007)
The Race (2007)
Eclipse (2009)
The Spire (2009)
In The Name of Honor (2010)
The Devil's Light (2011)
The Final Judgment (2011)