Lori Sturdevant: A new novel from an old source

By Lori Sturdevant

Last update: November 3, 2009 - 10:47 AM

Lori Sturdevant The book that fell out of a hand-addressed manila envelope a few days back definitely wasn't about Minnesota politics or government. "Murder at Mountain Lion Canyon," it said, by Nicholas Hazel. But Hazel wasn't the name scribbled in the return address. I wasn't positive, but I thought it read "Hasselmo."

A phone call to Tucson, Ariz., and the mystery of the book's authorship was solved. Nicholas Hazel and former University of Minnesota president Nils Hasselmo are one and the same. The erudite linguist from Sweden who took the administrative reins at the University of Minnesota in December 1988 and held them until mid-1997, then became head of the Association of American Universities until his retirement in 2006, has written his first mystery novel. It's available at Amazon or Barnes and Noble online, or from the publisher at orders@xlibris.com.

Not surprisingly, the protagonist of "Murder at Mountain Lion Canyon" is a retired academician. His name in early drafts was Nick Hazel, Hasselmo said. When he decided to publish the whodunit under a nom de plume, the hero's name was appropriated for the cover, and the main character was renamed Nick Moor. Moor has an Italian sidekick named Luigi, another retired professor -- which reminded me that in the early 1990s, Hasselmo's chief of staff at the University of Minnesota was a professor named Mario Bognanno.

Minnesota readers will have fun not only discovering how Nick Moor solves the crime, but speculating about which Minnesotans may have inspired other characters in the novel. Hasselmo isn't telling. He did allow that he's working on a second mystery, so more characters with possible Minnesota roots are in the offing. He's clearly enjoying his new literary venture. "It lets me imagine that the way to deal with the academic competition is to knock them off," he said with a laugh. Was there a side to the mild-mannered Hasselmo that Minnesotans did not know?

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