History Lessons by Zoe B. Wallbrook
History Lessons is real-life tenured college professor Zoe B. Wallbrook’s debut novel, heralding a new series. In nearly equal parts humor, romance and murder mystery, it features captivating young heroine Daphne Ouverture, who will be an instant fan favorite.
Daphne has the bragging rights of a freshly minted doctorate, which is the first step for her tenure track in academia. The fictional prestigious Harrison University has employed her as Associate Professor of European History. Bilingual in English and French, she has studied in Paris and is an expert in modern French imperialism.
Her family came to the United States from Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in West Africa. Her thesis, Family Matters: Race, Gender, and the Making of Black Families in Eighteenth-Century France,has led to a signed contract with a well-respected university press to expand her work into a book. Research was tough going. Given that prominent white women were rarely well documented aside from Madame Pompadour or Marie Antoinette made her search for women of color in Europe in the late 1700s akin to seeking the proverbial needle in a haystack.
Death on Campus
Daphne is a self-described introverted nerd, more comfortable in archives and research libraries than in wine bars or gastropubs. Her dating life has been comprised of a series of disasters exacerbated by the fact that when stressed, she tends to babble about the evil 19th-century Belgian colonial administrators’ practices of killing and dismembering indigenous African tribe members to enforce compliance from their laborers.
Dinner dates arranged from promising online chats often fled well before a dessert menu was proffered. Daphne laments to her best friends, Elise Park, a professional toxicologist, and Sadie (Sadhika Pandaram), that she might permanently be leading the circumscribed life of a cat lady determined to eradicate errant thoughts of plagiarism among her students. An eidetic memory, giving her perfect retention of books and academic papers read, may be one of the “superpowers” which had helped assure her own academic eminence and is certainly an invaluable tool for an instructor.
Daphne’s calm, organized world is shattered suddenly when 32-year-old Professor Sam Taylor, charismatic and handsome rising star in the Anthropology Department and “golden boy” of Harrison University, is murdered in his own charming Victorian cottage. Sam had been profiled in the New York Times and interviewed frequently by major media outlets about his research and writing delving into the prison industrial complex, its violence and social inequities.
Judging from the severity of the blunt force trauma that cracked his skull and rendered him lifeless, he was not universally liked. Strangely, his last telephone call had been to Daphne and included a cryptic text message containing fragments from Papillon that might provide a clue to his killer’s identity.
To her horror, his fiancée, Molly Henderson, was the one who discovered the body. Daughter of a wealthy, powerful family, Art Historian Molly, who also works at Harrison University as a Vice President, had flown in from New York City, where she was having a final fitting for her bridal gown.
Detective Drama
It doesn’t take the police detectives of Calliope (a small town presumably somewhere in the Hudson Valley) long to determine Sam had some dark secrets and more than a few people who might have cause to wish him dead. They included a mobster he met while conducting research in the state penitentiary and female students he may have accosted or pressured for sexual favors.
Sam’s sudden death begins to bring to light an unsavory collusion with the misogynistic and racist Ken Miller, head of the Anthropology Department and interim dean, who is slated to be the permanent department head. Daphne was stunned when she learned he had been stalking her.
Stranger still, an inexpensive French language paperback copy of author Henri Charrière’s semi-autobiographical novel Papillon is missing from her carefully arranged bookshelves. The only person who could possibly have taken it was the now deceased Sam during his one brief visit to her house. The killer or killers seem to think she is holding something of Sam’s that they want returned and will stop at nothing to get it.
Calliope PD is small, understaffed and ill-equipped for a capital crime investigation. Detective Asma Ahmed is married with three sons and under pressure from Captain Hamilton to solve the crime fast, given the prominence of Sam’s future in-laws.
She begged a favor from her former partner, Rowan Peterson, who had left the police force 14 months earlier to open a bookstore, to join the team as a consultant. Rowan is a gentle giant, extremely tall and thin with unruly brown hair, detail-oriented and keenly observant with a lightning quick intuitive mind well-suited for detective work. He has sufficient means enabling him to live in a lovely Victorian home crammed with books and to pursue his own interests.
Circumstances of this rare murder case and his friendship with Asma and her family prove sufficient to draw him into the case. Based on circumstantial evidence, his former partner, Detective Ahmed, seems willing to pin the murder on Daphne; that is, until her life is endangered.
Professor Turned Amateur Sleuth
After a girls’ night out with her best friends, consuming tapas along with a substantial amount of alcohol, Daphne is bewildered when she awakens concussed, head throbbing, in a hospital bed with a nasty bump on her head and her parents, Jim and Fabiola Ouverture, hovering. They rushed to be with their baby girl; Daphne is the youngest of their four children.
Her mother convincingly emulates a mother lioness about to charge, who demands the physicians hasten the MRI while at the same time holding the detective team at bay. When, hours later, Daphne is released, they find her front door is ajar and her home ransacked with books from the many bookcases rifled through and tossed aside, littering the room.
History Lessons gathers speed as Daphne begins her own detecting in order to clear her name, maintain her reputation and resume teaching classes. Meanwhile, bookstore owner and police consultant Rowan and suspect/victim Daphne have been experiencing a magnetic attraction ever since gazing into each other’s eyes; his are gray with flecks of blue reflecting a warm and sensitive nature, while hers are deep, dark brown.
Immediately posing intelligent questions about her research and teaching curriculum, he then began quietly sorting and reshelving her books during the investigation into the home break-in. It becomes patently obvious they can’t wait until the murder is solved to begin dating. Her parents are not immune to his intelligence and charms.
There are twists, turns and multiple layers in this charming romantic mystery that will keep readers’ eyes glued to its pages. One hopes author Zoe B. Wallbrook has launched an enduring series.
About Zoe B. Wallbrook:
Zoe B. Wallbrook is a recently tenured professor whose academic research has appeared in outlets such as the New York Times and The New Yorker. She was selected for mentorship by LA Times bestseller Elizabeth Little, and History Lessons, her first novel, was a runner-up for the Eleanor Taylor Bland Award. Zoe’s hobbies include beginning all emails with, “My sincerest apologies for my slow reply,” pretending to understand how astrological signs work, and crying at the end of every Call the Midwife episode. She and her husband live with their stalker, a black lab/pittie mix named Sophie.
