New Murder Mystery Glorifies In Memorial Hall Architecture

If students mention Memorial Hall's architecture, it is usually in the form of a complaint. Yet now, the design of the building so many have called ugly and an eyesore is celebrated in a forthcoming murder mystery with accompanying illustrations.

Jane Langton, author-illustrator of "The Memorial Hall Mystery," said Tuesday she considered it a challenge to incorporate "every scrap" of the 100-year-old building into the mystery.

"I put the entire building in the book, every last brick and broom closet," Langton, who calls the building a "glorious old structure," added.

Langton did not include any portraits of current Harvard officials in "The Memorial Hall Mystery." She instead set the story in the near future, after elevating President Bok to the Supreme Court "so that I could say what I pleased about his fictional successor."

Langton said Memorial Hall's architecture helped shape the plot of the mystery. When she climbed the building's tower and looked down into the five gothic vaults she describes as mathematical curves in three dimensions, from above," Langton said she knew she had to put the conic designs into the book.

The book's final chase scene culminates with the murderer's suicide plunge into one of the cones.

Langton, who spent a summer doing the illustrations for the book and a year and a half researching it, said she received much help from Harvard officials and personnel. "Everyone seemed to think a building like Memorial Hall required that a murder mystery be written about it, and was very enthusiastic," Langton said.