Death of an Old Goat

Written by Robert Barnard. Professor Belville-Smith had bored university audiences in England with the same lecture for fifty years. Now he was crossing the Australian continent, doing precisely the same. Never before had the reaction been so extreme however, for shortly after an undistinguished appearance at Drummondale University, the doddering old professor is found brutally murdered. As Police Inspector Royle (who had never actually had to solve a crime before) probes the possible motives of the motley crew of academics who drink their way through the dreary days at Drummondale and as he investigates the bizarre behaviour of some worthy locals, a hilarious, highly satirical portrait of down under emerges. Robert Barnard received the Cartier Diamond Dagger in 2003, Britain's top award for lifetime achievement in crime writing. "Death of an Old Goat" was his first crime novel and was written while he was professor of English at the University of Tromso in Norway.