When I was a sophomore in college, my professor handed me a novel, written by a woman who had taught briefly at the college I was attending. She had moved on to teach elsewhere, common in the academic life, but the novel, according to my professor, fictionalized the campus and particularly the English department. It was a horror novel, with a murder, and I would recognize some of the suspects.
The academic novel has been a mainstay in bookstores for generations, from Willa Cather's "The Professor's House" to "Blue Angel" by Francine Prose. Many campus novels, like Richard Russo's "Straight Man" are comedic. Some detective novels substitute the college campus for the quaint English country home as a setting for suspicious death — and some books, like "Academy Gothic" by James Tate Hill, do both: murder and comedy on campus.
