Opihi

What is the real price of scholarly ambition? Who pays that price?

Cliff West, a retired professor from New Zealand, hauls the body of renowned anthropologist Antoine Lepan from a steam-shrouded hot pool in Chile’s Atacama Desert. He becomes obsessed with finding out how the Frenchman met his fate on their pre-conference tour.
’Our professions aren’t that different, ’ Cliff tells the detective investigating Lepan’s background. ’Ask the right questions, collect and analyse the right information, draw your conclusions.’
Long haunted by the cost of his own outwardly successful career, Cliff is drawn into analysing the wider impacts of academic ambition. People and events from the past begin to intersect with present-day conflicts and danger in the Atacama as the truth about Lepan unfolds.
How far does Lepan’s shadow reach?
What will Cliff conclude about how he died?

’Fascinating insights into academic misdoings, believable characters and action, an exciting plot and a clever and unexpected twist. A really good read, set in an area few know much about.’
-Richard Butler, Emeritus Professor, Strathclyde Business School.

’Beautifully crafted whodunnit with a realistic setting. I loved how it takes you on a journey to Chile, but mostly how it depicts, with humour and a touch of irony, the lives of a class of academics that is bordering on extinction. Can’t wait for the narrator’s next adventure.’
-Carolina Miranda, co-editor of The Foreign in International Crime Fiction, Transcultural Representations.