THE MYSTERY OF THE INVISIBLE HAND

Harvard professor Henry Spearman, returning from Stockholm with his Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, accepts a visiting appointment at San Antonio’s Monte Vista University just in time to investigate his fourth murder.

Nobody except the police believes that MVU artist-in-residence Tristan Wheeler hanged himself. No doubt he was saddened by the inexplicable recent death of his two parrots, Canvas and Frame. But why would he willingly end the torrent of sales, interview requests and speaking gigs unleashed by his championing of “free art”—widely available copies that are indistinguishable from their originals? If he’d wanted to get murdered, however, Wheeler couldn’t have picked a better time. His name had already been in the news ever since someone stole five of his paintings from his neighbor Dr. Raul Ramos six weeks ago; his mysterious death sends the cost of his work skyrocketing; and Henry Spearman, who’d rather be teaching than sleuthing (A Deadly Indifference, 1995, etc.), is on hand to sort it all out. But not before the round-robin of obligatory academic social occasions gives him ample opportunity to dispense numberless aperçus on the dismal science and deliver several more extended lessons on Adam Smith and the virtues of the free market. The characters may be cutouts, but the whodunit is logical enough, even if it's something of an afterthought. The closing defense of unfettered capitalism would seem gratuitous if it weren’t the whole point of the exercise.

Instead of using his mystery as a peg for descriptions of the French countryside or medieval history or gourmet meals or second-chance romance, Jevons uses it for an exposition of elementary economics. The results are scarcely less entertaining and a good deal more educational.