Tangled Web UK Review July 2007
Murdering Americans by
Ruth Dudley Edwards
hbk out May 07
Published by Poisoned Pen Press
at £15.95
Another delightful satire by the author of a string of novels, each using
the mystery genre to carry her outrageously iconoclastic themes.
In this book, she assaults 'political correctness' in a big way, specifically
that as inflicted upon the American educational system, but with plenty of
digs and parallels with Britain.
As usual, her heroine is Baroness 'Jack' Troutbeck, the eccentric and
forthright Mistress of a Cambridge college, who is bi-sexual, cigar-
smoking and whose constant companion is her foul-mouthed parrot.
Dame Troutbeck is offered a 'freebie' semester as a Visiting Professor in
a small-town university in Indiana, who are under the misapprehension
that she is a radical socialist like the majority of those 'loonie-lefts' who
now run many American seats of so-called learning – to quote, 'academia
in the United States is now dominated by knee-jerk liberalism, contempt
for Western civilisation and the institutionalisation of insane political
correctness'.
She is soon as appalled by what is going on there, as the college grandees
are at her blatantly-right-wing attitudes. The college administration has
been hi-jacked by a woman Principal and her sinister enforcer, who have
Freeman State University in an iron grip of radical, but avaricious liberals
whom she suspects have murdered the previous sensible Provost.
A subversive student group is attempting to protest at the regime which is
denying them a proper education, in favour of 'dumbing-down', heavily
censored teaching and positive discrimination carried to such
extraordinary lengths that a young white male is looked upon as a pariah.
The book is peppered with accounts of true examples of PC gone mad,
such as the official who was sacked because he used the word 'niggardly'
in a report!
Jack Troutbeck rallies the forces of dissent, even to the extent of toting a
pistol; more deaths occur, but of course right triumphs in the end.
Though a rumbustious and often farcical tale, there is no doubt that Ruth
Dudley Edwards is using the story to grind a damned great axe and it is
apparent that she views the rise of such PC as a real threat to both
education and the Western way of life. The many quotes she slips in
from learned philosophers on the subject shows that she has taken the
issue very seriously and that it is more than just a cynical satire meant to
entertain.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
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