conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a description for a book titled The Professor of Truth about Tealing, Nilsen, Pan with the genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Mystery?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Big life-and-death questions lie at the center of the author's contemplative new novel, but its premise is as commercial as that of a bestselling thriller, amped up by real-life roots. Still haunted by the deaths of his wife and daughter in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland more than 20 years ago, British literature professor Alan Tealing gets a surprise visit from a man named Ted Nilsen, who asks him provocative questions. After some verbal fencing, Nilsen explains that he's a retired American intelligence officer with information that Tealing, who has made a second career of gathering information about the crash, will want to know. Like many others, Tealing believes that Khalil Khazar, the man convicted of the bombing, was not responsible. When Nilsen challenges him to deepen his investigation, the professor, conveniently on sabbatical at the time, accepts. The Scottish tragedy provides the framework for a deeper philosophical treatment of justice and loss and grief, all well served by the author's measured, literary prose. the author (The Testament of Gideon Mack) makes a case for the messy complexity of truth. (Sept.)
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first four paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Professor of Truth
  On one side the ground fell away from the road, and split into rocky gullies, dense with tangled vegetation, which presumably became watercourses when it rained. On the other side eucalyptus trees, and others I did not recognise, stretched to the sky, rising from a similarly thick bed of undergrowth. Grasshoppers kept up their tedious scraping, and there were the sounds, too, of stones or leaves disturbed by birds or insects or perhaps snakes. I knew that Australia had numerous venomous creatures: I kept to the middle of the road. Not a car had passed me in either direction in half an hour.
  The trees grew taller and thicker, and occasionally shielded me from the blaze of the sun. The road, though partially striped by shadow, nevertheless beat waves of heat up through the soles of my shoes. I hadn't seen a house since leaving the town. Could I have taken a wrong turn? I consulted the map. No, there was only one road to and from Sheildston, and I was on it. I kept going. A few minutes later I rounded another bend and the road flattened out completely. I had reached the higher ground above the narrow coastal plain.
  I looked back down on Turner's Strand. Most of it was hidden by the trees, but part of the beach was visible, and the sea beyond it. I'd been wondering why anyone would choose to live up on the hill, and here was one reason: the view was magnificent. The coast with its sandy bays and rocky inlets stretched north and south into the hazy distance, and a vast expanse of glittering turquoise ocean, dotted with sailboats and larger vessels, rolled to the horizon. To look out on that every day—well, you would never tire of it.
  And now the houses of Sheildston started to appear. "Discreet and secluded," "desirable" and "wealthy," the websites had said, and they were not wrong. The properties were mostly set away from the road, guarded by high walls or fences. Shady drives led from the gates towards half-hidden mansions in pink or white. I glimpsed grass, trimmed hedges, a tennis court, a statue or two. Almost every house, I thought, would have its own pool. From somewhere not too far away I heard children's cries, the sound of splashing. From another direction came the drone of a mower, the sit-upon kind required for big lawns.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know two more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I slept fitfully, and woke hungry at seven. I reached for the phone beside the bed and dialled Carol's number.
  I liked the way she'd picked up at once on my discretion. I liked the sound of her voice. That had never occurred to me before: how easy her voice was on the ear. On my ear.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Reverse the sentences.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: On my ear.. That had never occurred to me before: how easy her voice was on the ear. I liked the sound of her voice.
  I liked the way she'd picked up at once on my discretion. I reached for the phone beside the bed and dialled Carol's number.I slept fitfully, and woke hungry at seven
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last four paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I thought of Alice, the little girl she was, the woman she never became. I thought of whom she might have loved, if she had had the chance or the choice.
  I thought of Carol. I would phone her from the hotel, say I was coming home. I'd tell her I'd call again from the airport, to let her know my flight. I'd ask her to meet me. I'd say how good it would be to see her. I would mean it.
  I thought of the morning. I knew I could not walk back to Turner's Strand. Kim would have to give me a ride on her scooter or maybe she would have to call a taxi, if a taxi could get to us. But it was by neither of these methods that, lying there with sleep rushing in from all sides, I imagined myself leaving Sheildston. I imagined myself alone, going down the twisting road. I saw myself in my hat and borrowed clothes, with the jute bag over my shoulder with its contents, including whatever Parroulet had written. I saw myself moving through a charred and smoking wasteland, past animal corpses and the skeletons of trees, my shoes and ankles white with ash. I'd walk past the roadblocks and the fallen trunks, the wrecked cars and the road signs stripped of their painted words and symbols. I'd be returning from a war. I'd be limping home from the trenches. I'd be coming out of the fiery furnace. I'd be back from the dead, with news.
  A version of the first half of this novel was written during my time as Writer in Residence at Edinburgh Napier University, and I am grateful to the University and the Binks Trust for the opportunities afforded by that post.