Alex Shipley is a professor at Harvard when she's summoned back to her alma mater, Jasper College, for a murder investigation. In 1982, Alex took a special class taught by Professor Richard Aldiss--via video feed from his prison cell. Aldiss had been convicted of the murders of two female grad students, women whose bodies were found bloodied by axe blows and covered with novels by a reclusive writer named Paul Fallows. In his class, Aldiss hopes that his students will solve the murders and clear his name.
The only way to do this is by using Fallows's two published novels and to master a mysterious game called "the Procedure"--which you can't master until you've been invited to play. Through Alex's investigations in the course of the class, she cleared Aldiss of murder. But now there's been another murder; could Aldiss have actually been guilty?
Will Lavender (Obedience) unfolds his puzzling thriller by shifting between 1994 and the present, telling the story through the limited third-person perspective of Alex Shipley. By alternating the time periods, Lavender builds the suspense, creating cliffhangers and then switching back to the opposite time. He provides just enough information to lead the reader to the edge of the cliff and then throws in a twist.
By using Alex's perspective, Lavender creates a tone of uncertainty. Alex believes her professor is innocent, but so much evidence points to the contrary. Her internal conflict increases the plot's intensity. Alex poses the question to her classmate, "What if you could read a book and treat it as a competition between you and its author?" Lavender is challenging his readers with Dominance; can you defeat the master? --Jen Forbus of Jen's Book Thoughts