What if you had a dream you thought had passed you by, but then a murder gave you a second chance to pursue it? For a literate, worldly Renaissance man, Debs Kafka sure has a lot of problems. His relationship with the exotic, intoxicating Nicole Vermeer is on the skids. He's plagued with doubt about the academic path he's chosen, though he's only a thesis away from a PhD in criminology. His department chair has just been murdered. And he can't stop thinking about baseball. In Robert Elias' ingeniously constructed debut novel, the precarious world of graduate student, Debs Kafka, begins to unravel. Disillusioned, he sacrifices everything for a shot at his childhood dream: professional baseball. But he can't shake his obsession with solving the murder of his former colleague-- controversial-but-beloved professor and priest, Tom Licente. Kafka turns frantic when he learns that the murderer is now threatening to kill his teammate, the star pitcher for the San Francisco Giants, in the final days of a tight pennant race.

The Deadly Tools of Ignorance follows the witty and feisty Kafka through the dysfunctional halls of academia, into the scandal-ridden Catholic Church, down the dizzying streets of San Francisco, and into the locker rooms of Major League Baseball. Can he fathom the chaos of these different worlds, find the culprit, and still salvage his own aspirations and stormy romance?

A riveting page-turner, The Deadly Tools of Ignorance is rich with exhilarating action and with subtle, philosophical observations about the nature of crime and its prevention. Linking the novel's numerous strands is baseball - its lore, its culture, and its lessons for conflict, struggle, and resolution.