For my birthday a few months ago, my aunt gave me a tattered, leather-bound book titled "The Dartmouth Murders," written in 1929 by Clifford Orr '22. As a sucker for old texts, I relished inhaling the musty smell and thumbing through the yellowing pages, but set aside "The Dartmouth Murders" to enjoy after Summer term finals.
As I settled into my off-term this Fall, however, I soon began to experience profound Dartmouth separation anxiety the realization that the "real world" outside Hanover is not as comfy, crazy or fun and sought to soothe it by perusing Orr's novel.
Although "The Dartmouth Murders" is a bit disturbing it chronicles the fictional story of a senior boy who was murdered by a professor in his dorm room mentions of familiar landmarks such as the Hanover Inn, North Massachusetts Hall, Psi Upsilon fraternity and Rollins Chapel paint an accurate and familiar picture of the campus and surrounding area. I devoured the book the depictions of students and faculty members in the 1920s offer a glimpse into the Dartmouth of old, but also evoke a sense of the deeply rooted traditions, murder aside, that persist today. As both my Big Green blues and the approaching Halloween holiday left me poised to read more spooky tales set at Dartmouth, I decided to search online to see if anyone else had penned a Dartmouth murder mystery.
Much to my surprise, my Amazon search revealed that many authors have used our College on the Hill as a setting for their suspenseful stories. Most of these novels fit into the genre of the "cozy mystery," a novel in which there is little blood and gore and readers are not particularly attached to the murder victim. These novels thus serve not as terrifying thrillers, but as inviting bedtime or rainy-day reads.
The three books I found "The Student Body" (1986), "Red Leaves" (1996) and "Uncatalogued" (2002) not only brought me back to Hanover, but served as appropriate Halloween-time reads that I would recommend to any son or daughter of Dartmouth looking to continue with the spooks of this past weekend of to take in a dose of campus nostalgia.
In "The Student Body," which is set at Bowmouth (a clear cross between Bowdoin and Dartmouth), J.S. Borthwick presents the narrative of the murders of Alice Marmott, an obnoxiously overachieving undergrad, and the pushy, overbearing secretary Mrs. Parker. Marmott is found frozen into the snow sculpture on the Green during Winter Carnival, a weekend marked by winter games, bitter cold and excessive intoxication. Sarah Deane and her boyfriend, a medical student at the hospital near the rural college, set out to solve the mystery that plagues the campus. "The Student Body" reflects a creepy chronicle of the qualms of academia set against the backdrop of a school strikingly similar to our own.
In "Red Leaves," Paullina Simons tells the gripping story of four Dartmouth friends whose dalliances and interpersonal drama results in a murder on a "bitter cold night." Familiar campus markers the Class of 1902 Room, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, frat row, Leede Arena, Collis Cafe, McNutt Hall and many more pop up throughout the novel. "Red Leaves" is perhaps the most haunting of the Dartmouth mysteries I read in that it deals with the lives of actual Dartmouth students and the consequences of the secrets, passions and privileges they harbor.
My favorite of the Dartmouth mysteries was "Uncatalogued" by Julie Kaewert '81, a Dartmouth alum and author of the "Booklover's Mystery" series. "Uncatalogued" is the account of publisher Alex Plumtree's return to campus for his Dartmouth reunion and the disappearance of a Rauner Library archivist that spurs an investigation of ancient documents and British history. Most of the story is set in the Baker and Rauner Libraries, as Plumtree and his wife search for incriminating information about the British royal family in archived documents by 17th century diarist Samuel Pepys. Plumtree reflects on his days on the Dartmouth crew team and the novel's characters offer several quotable pieces of dialogue that capture Dartmouth life. Plumtree's description of "the oasis of grass criss-crossed by footpaths and alive with Frisbee" on the Green, his recollection of how "bass thumped from the Alpha Delta fraternity house sound equipment" and his wife's assertion that she is a "strong Dartmouth woman with as the old song puts it the granite of New Hampshire in [her] muscles and [her] brains" truly instill in the reader a sense of the Dartmouth community and the traditions that make the College special.
My discovery of this genre of Dartmouth mysteries was both surprising and satisfying, as these novels not only soothed my separation anxiety and provided ample pre-Halloween chills, but also impressed on me the uniqueness of Dartmouth's setting. The College's rich history, frigid climate, historic buildings and quirky traditions serve as elements that coalesce to create the ideal milieu for a "cozy mystery." This week, I urge anyone on or off campus with a penchant for murder mysteries or a desire to delve into a fictional Dartmouth world to curl up with one of these novels and savor a spellbinding story set at our school.
