What does an unsolved murder from over thirty years ago have to do with the semantics of language, mathematics, and the rules of logic? If the murder in question happens to be that of genius professor of mathematical linguistics at UCLA, Robert Hamilton (based upon the unsolved 1971 murder of the real-life UCLA Professor of Philosophy Richard Montague), then the answer would be, “Quite a lot.” The Semantics of Murder by Aifric Campbell (her debut novel) is the third, but possibly best, novel to tackle the mystery behind Montague’s death. The police assumed at the time that Richard was probably killed because of his dangerous lifestyle, by a group of strangers he’d brought home with him after a night of cruising for homosexual lovers.
The novel is told from the perspective of Robert Hamilton’s younger brother, the psychoanalytic Jay Hamilton, who lives in a fashionable part of London, listening to the problems of his wealthy clients. He turns these stories of personal pain and turmoil into fodder for his novels and short stories in his secondary career as a writer, using the pseudonym, J. Merritt. His story, of exploiting his clients and also of the sibling rivalry we see develop between Richard and himself as he contemplates his brother and the relationship they had, makes for a compelling psychological exploration into both of their psyches. They were raised in a single-parent household by their mother, after their father basically abandons them to their own devices. Their mother shows a decided preference for Jay’s older brother, reminding me of the Smothers brothers line: “Mom always loved you best!”
The other two authors whom I mentioned have written novels based on Montague’s life and his murder are David Berlinski (Less Than Meets the Eye) and Samuel R. Delany (The Mad Man). Both Delany’s and Berlinski’s novels focus on the murder’s investigator, not its victim. This is one major difference in Aifric Campbell’s approach to the subject matter from those of Berlinski and Delaney.
Aifric Campbell, a native of Ireland, writes very poetically and descriptively. Her character of Jay Hamilton tries to be as detached as possible and to separate himself from anything as base as emotional attachments. He believes he’s above experiencing the same sorts of problems his clients have (all leading back to relationships with their parents, and especially their mothers).
Ironically, Jay is as much a product of his upbringing as his clients, and has as many – if not more – unresolved issues as they do. He just is very good at hiding them away most of the time, and getting on with his life. Sometimes, though, when he feels provoked, generally by women, his detached facade briefly falls away in a dramatic flash of anger. Of course, he blames his client for his failure to perform, and he gets angry at Dana when she continues to ask him questions related to Robert’s homosexuality:
…Jay was momentarily derailed, he’d always prided himself on being vigilant and sensitive to his own reflexes, it was a reliable way of predicting when clients were becoming intolerable and a sign that he should act to terminate rather than dwell on its origin.
Language plays an important role in The Semantics of Murder, as you might suspect from its title. Robert believes that language can be thought of logically and mathematically. He goes way beyond Noam Chomsky (who concentrated primarily on syntax), and during his lectures he fills blackboards with complex formulas to prove his ideas. Also, the author’s poetic use of language raises a fairly simple story to the level of art. Jay thinks a person’s remembered past is like a story waiting for him to write down in a case book and then later use to write his own novel or story about. The “truth” is not important, compared with a person’s ideas about what the truth was in their memories of their pasts. Like with the author Muriel Spark, who is quoted at the beginning of The Semantics of Murder, Aifric Campbell’s novel, and the novels and stories of Jay – and the remembered pasts of his clients – “are fiction, out of which a kind of truth emerges.”
If you enjoy reading mysteries based on real-life murder cases, and beautifully written novels that are atmospheric and lyrical, then you should check out Aifric Campbell’s The Semantics of Murder and add it to your reading list.
