Harvard’s Hatreds

It's 1920, and Boston is gradually returning to normal after the Great War despite anarchists trying to spread fear. So, when a man's body is pulled out of the Charles River, the homicide department assigns the case to the unconventional Khalil Zamzar, a first-generation Maronite Arab, and the rookie, African American detective, Myssiah Pomare, a young, traumatized war hero from the South. The case may well remain unsolved and the dead man's picture added to the many on Zamzar's office wall.

The body, however, turns out to be a Harvard academic, a homosexual, the pathologist claims, and unpopular with his peers. This leads Zamzar and Pomare via the cruising grounds near the river across to Cambridge and the white male privilege of Harvard itself. There, where an Arab or an African American would likely be rejected for admission, a not so hidden culture of 'inversion' flourished until Harvard decided to take the law into their own hands.

As Zamzar and Pomare's own relationship develops from their respective secrets, the detectives must choose between justice for the dead man and justice for the victims of prejudice.

The sordidness of the failing Ponzi Scheme, the anarchist bombings, a world where homosexuality is repressed by brutal crackdowns, the situation of women in the year they gained the vote in the US are issues central to Harvard's Hatreds. Who hates whom enough for a string of killings and what are the ethical and philosophical parameters of murder?

Harvard's Hatreds – intense, provoking, searches for answers.