Rousseau's ghost : a novel / Terence Ball.

Author
Ball, Terence [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
Albany : State University of New York Press, [1998], ©1998.
Description
206 pages ; 24 cm

Availability

Copies in the Library

Location Call Number Status Location Service Notes
ReCAP - Remote StoragePS3552.A45544 R68 1998 Browse related items Request

    Details

    Subject(s)
    Summary note
    • An urgent but cryptic request from Professor Ted Porter summons his old friend and former Rhodes Scholar Jack Davis to Paris. Once there Jack finds his friend dead, apparently electrocuted by a faulty laptop computer. The Parisian police rule the death an accident and close the case. But Jack well knew his friend's deep aversion to modern technology, and to computers in particular, and believes the computer was not Ted's and his death no accident.
    • Unable to convince the police, Jack begins his own investigation, aided by Danielle, a beautiful young French woman who claims to have been Ted's research assistant and sometime lover.
    • Sifting through Ted's notes and an unfinished manuscript titled Rousseau's Ghost, he finds a mysterious entry: "Inst Pol??!!" Not knowing what this might mean, he travels to Oxford to see his old tutor, who surmises that Ted's shorthand query refers to the Institutions Politiques, a manuscript on which Rousseau worked in the 1750s but later abandoned and burned, except for the small section we now know as the Social Contract. Could the rest of the manuscript have survived? Could Ted have found it? If so, was he murdered for his discovery?
    • Could Jack and Danielle be next?
    ISBN
    • 079143933X (hbk. : alk. paper)
    • 0791439348 (pbk. : alk. paper)
    LCCN
    97047561
    OCLC
    38061579
    RCP
    C - O
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