Alfred Hitchcock might have appreciated the story line: a beautiful film student is found murdered on opening night of a Hitchcock film festival, with the time of death coinciding with the screening of Spellbound. Although one might expect a campus sleuth to emerge from the English department (perhaps a lecturer specializing in Arthur Conan Doyle?), a physics professor rises to the occasion in Elissa Grodin’s mystery novel, Death by Hitchcock.
The author has ties to the movie industry as the daughter of AMC theater founder Stanley Durwood (the chain gets name-checked) and wife of actor Charles Grodin. Her heroine, Edwina Goodman, is keen on particle physics and quantum mechanics, and can calculate the force of gravitational pull in her head. Useful tools in solving a crime? Grodin’s descriptions catch a sense for cinemaphilia in an Ivy League setting.
