Scholarly infighting can get a lot more violent than most outsiders realize, but most of the time, that violence is confined to the printed page. Not so in Concord, Mass., where the arrival of Homer Kelly, a well known expert on the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, has stirred up passions concerning a manuscript that may or may not have been written by Henry David Thoreau, one of Emerson's colleagues. Things come to a head during the towns annual re-enactment of Paul Revere's famous ride, when one of the "Minutemen" turns up dead, still in Revolutionary regalia. Accustomed to little more than the odd stolen bicycle, the local police are way over their head, but Kelly-in this, his first outing-proves as gifted at sleuthing as he is at scholarship.