Ceremony of Innocence

by Pa Rock
Reader 

Francis D. Smith, a college literature professor in Amherst, Massachusetts, wrote a series of six mystery novels in the 1980's about a fictional literature professor and amateur sleuth by the name of Neil Kelly who also taught in a small Massachusetts college.  As one might guess, the similarities between the author and his amateur detective were striking.  The books were popular, and for a while the professor maintained his anonymity through the use of a pseudonym, S.F.X. Dean, but the wily professor was eventually outed as the mystery author by one of his own students.   Francis D. Smith retired as a professor in 1986 and finished his final Neil Kelly novel soon after, at which point he apparently retired from writing as well.  He passed away in Amherst in 2017.

"Ceremony of Innocence" is the third volume in the Professor Neil Kelly mystery series.  In the first two books Neil Kelly was planning a sabbatical in England where he intended to write a biography of the English poet, John Donne, but each time that he was about ready to depart his plans were interrupted by inconvenient murders of people who were close to the professor.  In this third volume the literature professor finally arrived in England to begin his project.

After his arrival in London, Neil set off to move into the cottage that he had rented, sight unseen, in a rural English town, a quiet place which he hoped would be suitable for his writing.  When he arrived at his destination he learned that his landlady has received some erroneous information from a relative in America that indicated he'd would not be coming after all, and she had rented out his cottage to someone else.  Upset at this new development, the hapless professor moved on to another rural English town of which he was familiar.

Neil wound up in a small town on the coast of the English Channel, a place that was once frequented by John Donne and Sir Walter Raleigh.   While sitting in a local pub deciding what to do next, he looked up and saw an old friend from his youth walk in.

Although there are only six novels in the complete Neil Kelly series, the author managed to reveal significant portions of the personal history of his main character in each of the books.  In "Ceremony of Innocence" he illuminated young Neil Kelly, around the age of ten, as he spent a few years in Peking, China, with his parents - where the father, an amateur meteorologist who called himself "the Commander," worked for the US Embassy.  While in China in the 1930's Neil had two close childhood friends, a British lad named Gus Van Duren and a Chinese boy called Francis Li.  Together the boys learned each other's languages and made the streets of Peking their playground.

It was Gus Van Duren whom Neil encountered in the pub in the small English village, and they quickly renewed their old friendship.   Gus provided Neil with the use of rental property that he owned - and Neil was asked to serve as the godfather to Gus's infant son.  A couple of weeks later as Neil was shopping for gifts for his new godson, he was in a London kite shop where he inexplicably encountered the third member of the "Our Gang" group from those early days in China, Francis Li, now a Chinese government official.

The coincidences were piling up!

And then there were house break-ins in America and England, the theft of Chinese trunks in both countries, and several murders - including one of a baby - and the lives of three young friends from the 1930's once again became tightly knotted in the 1980's.

"Ceremony of Innocence" is, like the other Professor Neil Kelly mysteries, clever and tightly plotted.  The author tells his tale and keeps readers guessing throughout his presentation of the story.   He also shares a deep and involved development and history of the major characters - as well as some engrossing Chinese culture and history along with his usual insights into a few of the less-well-lit recesses and alleyways of English literature.

A professor writing about a professor will hopefully be entertaining - and it almost certainly will be educational.  "Ceremony of Innocence" does not disappoint in either regard.