Book: Double Negative
Author: David Carkeet
Year published: 1980
Date I finished: February 24, 2018
Review: This is a comic mystery novel set at the Wabash Institute, where a group of linguists is studying how children learn language by running a child care service that doubles as a linguistics lab. Then linguists start getting killed and one of them (the protagonist, Dr. Cook) tries to help the police solve the case.
The plot moves nicely and it has the usual twists and turns of a good mystery novel. The amusement comes both from the linguistics itself (the author is a linguist) and from the silliness and puns (most of the names of characters are descriptive of them - Dr. Cook can't cook; the first linguist to die is named Stiph etc.)
It's also interesting reading books from this era (1980) because they are current enough to seem modern but old enough to seem dated: People smoking in restaurants! Using typewriters! Doing all their research in actual books! It's also a reminder of how sexist things were, 38 years ago.
I think this will be especially enjoyed by people who like both mysteries and words.
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