PhDeath is a fast-paced thriller set in a major university in a major
city on a square. The faculty finds itself in deadly intellectual combat
with the anonymous Puzzler. Along with teams of US Military Intelligence
and the city's top detective and aided by the Puzzle Master of The New
York Times, their collective brains are no match for the Puzzler's
perverse talents. Carse, Emeritus Professor himself at a premier
university - in a major city on a square - shows no mercy in his
creation of the seemingly omniscient Puzzler, who through a sequence of
atrocities beginning and ending with the academic year, turns up one
hidden pocket of moral rot after another: flawed research, unabashed
venality, ideological rigidity, pornographic obsessions, undue political
and corporate influence, subtle schemes of blackmail, the penetration of
national and foreign intelligence agencies, brazen violation of
copyrights, even the production and sale of addictive drugs.