Robert Elias

Technological progress often only provides us with more efficient means for going backward
- Aldous Huxley


People ask me where I could have possibly gotten the protagonist and story for my first novel, The Deadly Tools of Ignorance: A Debs Kafka Mystery. I haven’t the faintest idea.

A budding criminologist working at a Catholic university in San Francisco? A graduate student increasingly disillusioned with academia and criminal justice, who rolls the dice and sacrifices everything for a shot at his boyhood dream—professional baseball? Where did all that come from?

Okay, it’s true that I teach politics and criminal law at the University of San Francisco, a Jesuit university in that great city. And yes, I’ve had second thoughts about the lofty ideals we often associate with higher education and law enforcement. And I’ll even confess that I had a fleeting brush with professional baseball. But none of those things had any influence whatsoever on my novel.

Of course, if you believe that, then I have a nice bridge--across the Golden Gate--to sell you.

All right, so we’ve all had dreams. But what if you had a dream you thought you’d left behind, but then a murder gave you a second chance to pursue it? That’s where I (and my life) leave off, and my protagonist, Debs Kafka, takes over.

For a literate and worldly Renaissance man, Kafka sure has a lot of problems. His relationship with the exotic and intoxicating Nicole Vermeer is on the skids. He’s plagued with doubt about the academic path he’s chosen, though he’s only a thesis away from his PhD in criminology. His department chair has just been murdered. And he can’t stop thinking about baseball.

Kafka discovers the body of Tom Licente, a criminology professor and Catholic priest. Although horrified by the death of his University colleague, Debs feels ill-prepared to investigate the murder until he sees the police arrest an innocent man. Lured into tracking the real culprit, Kafka enlists his criminal law students in the hunt. As they narrow down the suspects, Kafka’s doubts about criminal justice quickly multiply, and he laments the politics and expediency that so often characterize American law enforcement. Kafka finally leaves for baseball, with the murder still unsolved, but he soon turns frantic when he learns that the murderer is now threatening to kill his teammate, the star pitcher for the San Francisco Giants, in the final days of a tight pennant race.

And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Kafka has one concern after another. He wonders about tough love philosophies and get tough policies that only seem to make problems worse. He worries about stereotypes and double standards in the criminal law. He’s appalled by the routine lunacy in academia, and the university’s indifference to social problems. He’s shocked by the abuses in the Catholic Church, and the doctrinal pressures it exerts on parochial universities. And, as a throwback, Kafka can only shake his head at a society entranced by fancy new gadgets, electronic gizmos, and shopping malls.

As his name suggests, Kafka worries about a society where things increasingly make no sense, about a culture that’s surreal, absurd, and irrationally fearful, and about a nation that seems more content with ignorance than enlightenment.

Not coincidentally, those things bother me, too. What’s happened to the dream of American society? In my teaching and previous books, I’ve pondered that question for a long time. But non-fiction social science, even when pitched towards the lay reader, has its limitations. Its findings, statistics, and analyses can’t fully illuminate the conditions faced by real people and the challenges that confront our society.

Ironically, only fiction—the unreal—can bring those experiences to life. So I took a stab in that direction, and wrote a mystery novel, which has been published thanks to the good graces of Rounder Books (the book division of the legendary Rounder Records). While the story, the characters, and the action always come first, the mystery format provided a unique and inviting structure for examining issues I had previously explored only through non-fiction. How would fictional characters confront the social problems that troubled Kafka so much? Writing that story was exhilarating: I knew where I wanted to go, but never knew—until I was finished--where I would end up.

But how does one write, fictionally, about the American dream—my central theme, after all? Among all the possibilities, what metaphor could stand up to the plate? It was a no-brainer: the dream of baseball. Linking the novel’s numerous strands is the national pastime – its lore, its culture, and its lessons for conflict, struggle, and resolution. The late Renaissance scholar and baseball commissioner, Bart Giamatti, said that baseball, “is the last pure place where Americans can dream. This is the last great arena, the last green arena, where everybody can learn the lessons of life.”

And in The Deadly Tools of Ignorance, there are some valuable lessons to be learned. And some glimmers of hope, as well. Law enforcement professionals are increasingly questioning conventional crime policies. Liberation theology is showing the positive role religion can play in society. Academics are more and more concerned about social progress. Some people are taking back their time and lives from the lures of the postmodern world, and exploring the possibilities of a new American dream. Hell, even baseball’s getting serious, with the advent of its new drug policy.

More important, The Deadly Tools of Ignorance follows the witty and feisty Debs Kafka through the dysfunctional halls of academia, into the scandal-ridden Catholic Church, down the dizzying streets of San Francisco, and into the locker rooms of Major League Baseball. Can he fathom the chaos of these different worlds, find the culprit, and still salvage his own aspirations and stormy romance?

Imagine: “Good Will Hunting meets The Rookie on the Field of Dreams behind the Catholic Church.” Well, maybe not quite all that. But close.