Query: H.L. Durkin/SMARTER THAN YOU MURDERS 

                                                                                                            (Mystery/Adult Fiction 74,000 words)

No academic institution in the U.S. was more sacrosanct than Yale University. And nothing more important to the University than the safety of its elite students. The abduction and murder of a young female graduate student, Sophia Spielman, has the leadership fearful of the damage to its reputation and looked to the New Haven Police Department to solve the crime...and quickly.

The murderer was serving up suspects like a short order cook at the local diner during the morning rush and Homicide Detectives Kaz Constantine and Casey Devine began to wonder if they were conducting an investigation or participating in a game designed by the killer. Was it Yale Professor Simon Wilkie who found the victim’s panties in his dresser? Or Thor Rhymer from the Getty Museum who met with the victim for a job interview the evening she disappeared? Finally, the investigative focus fell on Dr. Herald St. John, the President of venture capital firm Molecular Investments, who had studied the paralyzing agent curare twenty years earlier as a chemist at Princeton. Yes, the same toxin that killed the young woman. The detectives and the killer foresaw the same happy ending. St. John would be tried by a jury and, whether found innocent or guilty, the investigation would come to an end.