The Nature of Things

I saw a review of this book and was intrigued by the summary of its plot of having a philosophy professor plucked from his safe if boring life and pushed into the world of drug-runners. It seemed to have possibilities. Moreover, it was another debut novel and my recent experience with first novels has been very good so I was ready to give another one a chance. Oscar Boatwright is the professor - actually assistant professor making barely $20,000 a year - of philosophy in question. His school is never actually named but is somewhere on the West Coast. He teaches introductory classes as well as some more advanced ones.  He seems to be sleepwalking through his existence until one day he is shocked into wakefulness by a phone call. He is told that his mother has died on an airplane flight from Hawaii. He had no idea his parents were in Hawaii. After all, they lived in Indiana. Oscar learns that his mother, who had suffered from lifelong clinical depression, had fallen under the sway of...