The book analyses the contemporary academic mystery novel through the lenses of the classical detective novel and the university novel. The authors of the analysed mysteries are scholars who invent apparently insoluble criminal conundrums to highlight the problems haunting the higher education system, such as plagiarism or fight for tenure.
The book focuses on contemporary staff-centred mystery novels set in the academic domain, written by scholars who enrich the generic convention of the detective novel with their academic expertise. The author delineates the academic mystery genre conventions and their connection with the characteristics of both the classical detective novel and the academic (university) novel. The analysis shows that the academic mystery novel not only fills in the classical detective formula with academic discourse, university settings, and the characters and conflicts of academics from different echelons of the university hierarchy but also, and more importantly, refers to and comments upon the current situation of tertiary education.
The academic mystery novel as detective fiction, academic fiction, and meta-educational fiction - Metafictional and intertextual games in the academic mystery novel - Academics as characters of detective fiction - The academic gender gap
Elzbieta Perkowska-Gawlik is Assistant Professor of English Literature at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin. Her main research interests include academic and crime fiction, utopianism, narratology and cognitive analysis. She has published on contemporary British and American academic novels and utopian narratives.
