By Frequent Anguish

by Pa Rock
Reader

Francis D. Smith was the first Dean of Faculty at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, an institution that he had helped to found.  He also taught at that college as a professor of humanities and the arts.  During his lifetime Frank Smith authored seven novels:  "Harry Vernon at Prep" (1959) and a six-volume mystery series in the 1980's featuring an a middle-aged college literature professor, Neil Kelly, as an amateur sleuth who works his way through homicides that each have a personal connection to his life.  Smith wrote the Neil Kelly mysteries using the pseudonym "S.F.X. Dean."  

"By Frequent Anguish" is the first novel in the Professor Neil Kelly series.  It was described by the author as "a love story interrupted by a murder."

As the series opens Neil Kelly is a middle-aged widower with two grown daughters who have left home and married.  He is a tweedy academic who is preparing to go on a well-earned sabbatical to England where he plans to work on a biography of the English poet John Donne.   Professor Kelly is also in the beginning stages of a serious romance with one of his students, twenty-year-old Priscilla Lacey, who happens to be his God-daughter as well as the daughter of two close friends from his days in college.  Kelly had dated Priscilla's mother while in college and was a close college friend of her father - and her father went on to become the chairman of the board at Old Hampton, the (fictional) Massachusetts college where Kelly teaches.

Priscilla "Pril" Lacey had barely been introduced in this novel before she was murdered one evening in the school library.  Neil Kelly is awash in grief and the entire college community is stunned at the incomprehensible killing of this popular and well respected student.  Pril's distraught parents arrive on campus and take charge of her affairs, and her father, a campus power in his own right, convinces Neil to take charge of a private investigation into Pril's death.  He lets the college and the local police know that Professor Kelly will be representing the family and is to be included in all aspects of their investigations.

From that point on the story revolves around the investigation of a murder and it wends its way through life in a small New England college.

The most powerful aspect of "By Frequent Anguish" is the emotional catharsis that Neil Kelly goes through after learning that his new-found love, Pril Lacey, has been murdered.  Smith's description of the grief and anguish sweeping over the suddenly hapless professor is intense and unrelenting, pulling him into a vortex of grief that threatens to consume all that is left of his life.  It is a masterful description that allows readers deep inside the professor's private hell.

Frank Smith was an accomplished plotter and writer.  His character descriptions are wide and deep with careful insights into physical qualities, backgrounds, and motivations that provide readers with a comfortable knowledge of each character.  Smith's Professor Kelly novels are also rich in literary allusion, undoubtedly leaving many readers with the notion that they have been educated while being entertained.

"By Frequent Anguish" more than satisfies as a mystery, with a gripping storyline and enough clues to keep readers guessing, but it is the rich character descriptions that pull the readers onward and ultimately serve to complete the story.  It is a mystery that shines with a high literary polish - and it opens the door to the entire Professor Neil Kelly experience.

I recommend the novel and the series without reservation or hesitation!