THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE ASSASSIN

An ethics professor leads her students through an exercise with real-world implications in Baden’s novel.

Professor Iris Tate teaches moral philosophy at a British university, where she hopes to apply her discipline to the crisis of climate change. She’s just received an intriguing request from the Crown Prosecution Service: a murder has occurred in a closed committee on climate, but prosecuting the murderer would give the powers that be an excuse to kill an important climate policy recently passed by the committee. Would Iris be willing to put the question of whether the state should prosecute to her students, since, after all, young people have the greatest stake in the outcome? In the past, Iris has used students as guinea pigs on behalf of corporate studies, but this is the first time she’s ever been asked to weigh in on a murder investigation (the students will have no idea the case is a real one). Iris, reeling from the recent death of her wife, is desperate to take on a project with meaning—plus, the school is pushing professors to be more entertaining in the classroom, and what’s more entertaining than a murder mystery? As Iris walks her students through a simulated version of the real case, she is forced to reckon with the losses and compromises in her life that have brought her to this position. It turns out ethical dilemmas abound at every stage of the process, and Iris might not be the disinterested arbiter she aspires to be. Iris narrates her struggles with a dry humor, as here when discussing one of her fictional suspects: “His medications may have combined with his cannabis smoking and prior issues to tip him over the edge. I asked whether we should hold him morally responsible for his actions, even if they include murder. It wasn’t my best class, but this is more of a legal question anyway.” Less a traditional mystery novel than a philosophy-driven campus tale, the book satisfies as an extended thought exercise with a relatable human center.

An inventive novel about grief, climate change, and academia.