The Ancient Nine by Ian K. Smith

★★★

Intriguing mystery and murder in an all-male club at Harvard University

In 1927, Harvard student Erasmus Abbott disappears without a trace while trying to break into the university’s most secret society, the Delphic Club. Flash forward to 1988 and Spenser Collins, a sophomore student and member of the university basketball team, is “punched”, i.e. chosen as a candidate to join the Delphic, the most elite and prestigious of Harvard’s nine all-male clubs. As a young black man from the South Side of Chicago, son of a single mother from a poor background, Spenser is an outsider in the world of white male privilege that is Harvard. Yet upon his entrance into this bastion of brotherhood and heritage, Spenser finds himself on the trail of dark secrets kept hidden for generations by men in the highest echelons of wealth and power.

With the help of his friend Dalton, who is born to privilege but rebels against it, Spenser resolves to find out what happened to Erasmus all those years ago and what the Delphic Club is really hiding. Delving into the Delphic’s past, while at the same time undergoing the club’s gruelling, often puerile, and at times orgiastic initiation rituals, Spenser begins to uncover conspiracies and criminality at the heart of its history. The discovery of the existence of the Ancient Nine, a core group of members pledged to guard the Delphic’s secrets with their lives, places Spenser and Dalton in danger as they are watched, followed, and eventually threatened by shady figures determined to protect the club’s secrets at any cost.

The Ancient Nine unveils an intriguing mystery at a leisurely pace, following Spenser as he unravels the Delphic Club’s secrets through research in assorted libraries and archives around Harvard. The descriptions of the university, its history and its beautiful campus are vivid, eloquent and extensive, often immersing the reader in both the material and intellectual world of the illustrious Ivy League college. The mystery is satisfactorily interesting and erudite, although, plot-wise, it is occasionally uneven and the denouement is somewhat disappointing.

While the race aspects of the novel are handled well and with sensitivity, what really lets this book down is its treatment of women. Even taking into account that the novel is set in 1988 (its depiction of women resembles novels of that era), and that all-male clubs and fraternities may still treat women that way to this day, to read the Harvard men’s displays of blatant sexism, misogyny, and objectification of women presented without any form of critique is unsettling and at times downright offensive. The writer may simply be trying to convey the attitudes of the time through Spenser’s eyes and thus presenting them without comment; however, would this serve as an excuse if it were racism or homophobia of the time being depicted?

Overall, The Ancient Nine is a solid mystery in the tradition of Dan Brown-type thrillers and as such should be enjoyed by fans of the genre in that respect.

Jo-Anne Blanco (as Arwen Evenstar) for Breakaway Reviewers

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review

©Jo-Anne Blanco 2018