Was Jeremy Ronson, a top-ranked university official, defenestrated (tossed out a window), or did he defenestrate himself? The police decide his death was accidental, but Mike Woodsen, the university’s PR director, is not convinced. He decides to investigate the death on his own. Woodsen interviews Ronson’s colleagues, an odd collection of administrators, nerds, suckups and misfits, and learns that Ronson had a justified reputation as a sonofabitch, earning many enemies in his chequered career. Meanwhile, Woodsen’s day job gives him a bird’s-eye view of campus life in the 21st century. He works inside a stifling but sometimes-comical university bureaucracy. that seems intent on its own self-destruction by advertising questionable claims—“Hey, we’re better than Harvard! Really we are!”–to enhance its reputation. Woodsen’s investigative skills lead him down several dead-end trails, but just when he is about to throw in his sweaty towel he comes across some clues that could be the skeleton key for unlocking the mystery. Has he solved a puzzle that police say doesn’t even exist? The conclusion he reaches is simultaneously absurd and totally logical.

About the Author: Robert M. Roseth, 70, worked at the University of Washington from 1977 to 2014, primarily as director of the news office. He always found life on a major university campus to be an odd mix of serious scholarship, exciting discovery and stultifying bureaucracy. It’s no accident that the word “bureaucracy” is defined as “a way of organizing large numbers of people” and also as a synonym for red tape.

He began dreaming of writing a book about this phenomenon long before he retired from his day job, and like a hidden stone in his shoe it just wouldn’t leave him alone.

Ivy is a Weed is his first novel. Some would insist that as a public relations person, he had been writing fiction for years.