“The facts were nothing. Prejudice was all.” Or so thinks forcibly retired Sam Langston, New England college professor, Thoreau scholar, and falsely accused murderer of a successor who had implicated Langston by typing his initials onto a piece of paper. “As he watched his career suddenly capitulate to administrative fiat,” Langston reflects, “he did not recognize that his antagonism ... was to be used against him again, in ways more damaging than merely the loss of a career.”

Fortunately, Langston has a good lawyer to see him through the imperfections of the justice system and the give-and-take of the court proceedings. He also seeks refuge in his scholarly thoughts and academic comforts — which turn out to be a hot and cold running comfort for the reader.

The welcome change of pace that Brute Neighbors signifies lies in bringing into the narrative literary and philosophic facets in a way that contrasts ivory tower academe with flesh-and-blood reality. And so the interjection of such heady matters as William James’ epistemology, Emerson’s transcendentalism, de Toqueville on democracy, and of course Thoreau on just about everything, refreshingly distinguishes this meandering mystery by H. R. Coursen, himself a New England college professor of renown.

On the other hand, the supercilious Langston’s skewed perspective and oddly juxtaposed stereotyping and generalizing often imposes a heavy-handed brand of psychobabble and socioeconomic mumbo-jumbo. In addition to his smug real-old-real-fast contempt for the judge and jury, Langston’s digs at President Bush and his administration are good for a few valid mentions, but the excessive continuance just becomes forced and out of place.

And we also get a little knee-jerk know-how about societal insecurity from a self-important professor convinced that “society was having its revenge on him“ because “he had refused to become what society insisted he become”:

So the cops and the [school] administrators took on the defensive hostility of those who do understand for those who don’t. In the world they wanted, policemen would have all the power, no maddening and unnecessary restrictions. ‘Of course, dictatorship would be easier,’ as little Bush says.

The neo-Nazi attack upon Langston that ekes out an advancing storyline and narrows the search for the real killer even gets a little abstract and simplistic theorizing as it serves to solicit some sympathy for the three fascistic punks involved. But these so-called “Republicans whose parents still fear the outsiders” really deserve a response more realistic and duly brutal than musings about shrinking unions from a rationalizing apologist who instead views the police as “self-righteous bullies” who "provoke resistance all the time."

Indeed, “The facts were nothing. Prejudice was all.”