Keith Howells

Introduces the protagonist, important secondary characters, and an indication of the plot. “You shouldn’t go. It’s not safe.” Daphne spoke over her shoulder as she stood expertly distant from a pan of spitting bacon, not a drop reaching her immaculate white-and-mauve flight attendant’s uniform. Alan had expected such a demand from his mother, ever since the dramatic news had broken the day before. He was ready with his answer. “No can do. The event’s mandatory for faculty. Brooksey’s rules.” Brooksey was his nickname for Brooks Cartwright, professor of history at Fullington University, and instigator of the “Past is Prologue” lecture series. The presenter at the prior event had complained about sparse attendance, oblivious to his reputation of speaking in a monotone, from notes anyone could have found online beforehand. Brooks had responded by making attendance mandatory for anyone who was on the teaching staff, which included graduate students like Alan. “If you get bored in a two-hour lecture, then you shouldn’t be studying history,” he’d proclaimed. His mother slid a delicately presented plate of bacon, scrambled eggs, and lightly buttered toast across the kitchen table, then sat opposite him with her standard cup of herbal tea and half a bran muffin. “Brooks doesn’t have the right to get you killed. Tell him you can’t make it.” Her deep brown eyes burned into him, under well-plucked eyebrows, and the few creases her Botox-treated forehead would allow. She looked seriously concerned. “Mom, it’s a joke! Here, let me show you.” Alan reached into his back pocket and pulled out a well-folded, glossy brochure for that evening’s event. Tuesday September nineteenth at seven p.m., it read, followed by the theme in large, bold letters. Our distinguished panelists will give historical perspectives on current events. … and one of them will die. The last line was in a deep red, followed by two blood-drop emojis. When the university staff had discovered the apparent hack, they’d desperately tried to recall the copies, but it was too late. The PDF used to print the brochure had also been attached to a campus-wide email, and had since gone viral on all the popular social media platforms. “I knew history was murder, but this is ridiculous!” blared a Facebook post from the student’s union; a TikTok video featured a clock running backwards, with the caption “Apparently historians can now research the future.” The Abraham Lincoln references were too numerous to count. Alan stabbed a finger at the blood-red text. “That’s a Comic Sans font. Comic as in funny. If this file came off the shared server, then there are hundreds of people who could have made this change as a prank. It’s just a joke, Mom!” “And suppose it isn’t?” She poured coffee into his mug, tipped in a splash of cream, and stirred vigorously. “Why hasn’t the university canceled the event?” Alan took a sip of coffee. It was scalding hot, but he needed to slow the pace of the confrontation. “The university president issued a statement saying we have an unbroken hundred-and-eighty-year tradition of free speech, and we’re not going to abandon that now. They’ll lay on extra security. It’ll be fine.” “And you trust that?” She grasped his hands as if scared to let him go. “What if there’s a bomb in the theater and you all get blown up?” “Then it would say they’re all going to die!” Alan freed his hands and picked up a strip of bacon. “There’s going to be no bomb, no hail of bullets, no horde of machete-wielding ninja zombies. All it means is that our sleepy little lecture series has suddenly become the hottest ticket in town. I’ve already been offered fifty bucks for my seat in the front row.”

1. STORY STATEMENT A history student named ALAN witnesses a gruesome death during a debate, and recognizes the symptoms are identical to an unsolved poisoning from the 1850’s. He researches the historical case, initially out of curiosity, but when his activities run him afoul of the police, he must continue the investigation to clear his name. The murderer recognizes Alan is getting too close for comfort and poisons him, leading to a frantic dash for the antidote and a subsequent sting operation to bring the villain to justice. 2. ANTAGONISTS Alan is apprehended behind crime scene tape in the university library, reading a book about an identical murder. This is after giving a TV interview where he implies that he knows who is going to die during the debate. The lead detective treats Alan as a prime suspect, and the impending court case hangs over Alan like a cloud. The murderer tries to steer Alan away from his research, and when that fails, plants false evidence that causes one of the other suspects to be arrested. When Alan figures out he’s been misled, he determines the actual murderer, but only after he’s drunk mugs of poisoned coffee. There is a dramatic confrontation between the two, before Alan escapes and is administered the antidote with minutes to spare. He plots an ingenious setup to tempt the villain out of hiding, leading to a final face-off at an airport where the murderer is trying to flee the country under a false identity. 3. TITLE The Coldest Cold Case History can be Deadly The Poisoned Grail 4. COMPARABLES The theme is a lead character performing historical research to unearth clues to a current-day crime. As such, comparable stories are: THE DA VINCI CODE by Dan Brown The Ellie McClellan Genealogy Mysteries by Beth Farrar 5. CORE WOUND AND PRIMARY CONFLICT An insecure history student trying to assist in a current day murder by researching an identical historical crime, stumbles from crisis to crisis as he is treated more like a suspect than a collaborator in the investigation. 6. INNER AND SECONDARY CONFLICT Alan promises his mother he’ll cease his historical research as it could jeopardize his dissertation. However, when an aging attorney who gets Alan released from jail dies unexpectedly, Alan feels he must vindicate the man’s death by continuing his research. Since he lives at home, he is constantly deceiving his mother, knowing that eventually he’ll have to confess as he needs her financial assistance to hire a lawyer for his court case. This is exacerbated by Alan’s promise to his dying father that he’ll never be a burden. A secondary conflict occurs when a professor is arrested based on Alan’s research, but Alan subsequently realizes the evidence was planted. Even worse, it looks like the person who did that was Alan’s supposed friend and partner in the investigation. 7. SETTING The action takes place in a venerable but fading Virginia University, where a visiting professor dies grotesquely during a high-profile debate with TV cameras rolling. Alan’s research takes him to the creepy innards of a holding cell after his arrest, a fascinating and highly-automated library, a staid pre-clinical research facility where an antidote is being developed, and an ancient stone barn full of molding artefacts and aggressive critters. The poison itself is eventually found in the wine cellar of an elegant estate, after Alan solves a confounding puzzle hidden in plain sight in a periodical from the 1870’s.