Graves in Academe

by Susan Kenney

Graves in academe by susan kennet

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Cozy

274 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

Reviews

[Janet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Susan Kenney, a professor at Colby College in Maine, set this mystery in the familiar setting of a small liberal arts college English department in Maine. For a murder mystery, the role of police and authorities are oddly minimized; the drama is set largely within the faculty of the college. The protagonist is young visiting English professor Roz, and much of the novel is a setting piece, describing her lectures, and her experiences with the not-so-feminist culture of the 1980s ivory tower. This novel was written in 1985, and my rating is based on an '80s rather than a current standard. In fact, its primary value is as an example of its time for those too young to have experienced life in a workplace run largely by men with attitudes formed before the civil rights era. All women at the time had to decide how to relate to the feminist movement, and made many different choices, several of which are shown here. Today, hardboiled tough-as-nails female detectives are standard fare, so some of Roz's uncertainty and reluctance to act can irritate. However, I think that to be honest, the pressures on Roz -- to be nice, to mind her own business, especially since she's at the bottom of the hierarchy, and to be forgiving toward questionable behavior by attractive and powerful men -- all still exist for women today.

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once I got it into my head that the time period was the 1980s, I enjoyed this puzzler.

[KA · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5. Decent prose but the red herrings were packed as tightly as sardines.

[Tiffany · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading a feminist whodunit from 1985 dealing in Aphra Behn plays and vegans is a pleasant reassurance that our present moment stands on the shoulders of many.

[Alexia Gordon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Starts with a dead body on the second page then spends the next hundred pages having her protagonist worrying about the proper pronunciation of the name of some obscure Maine town, juggling her three love interests (not counting the man she left behind because she thought they needed to take a break from their 4 month old relationship, which she entered on the rebound from another relationship), discussing the intricacies of Scandinavian patronymics, and expounding on her "existential feminist" reinterpretation of the Beowulf story as religious propaganda. And when a second murder finally occurs, the action happens "off screen." The protagonist calls a newspaper reporter who tells her what happened. The whole crime is summed up in one paragraph and it's back to Beowulf.

[Beverly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very elegantly constructed plot, particularly fun if you've read the "Great Books" on which the plot is based. Well written dialogue and characterization of the female academic protagonist. True, as one previous commenter said, that the technology is outdated by today's standards, but that's true of Sherlock Holmes, too. What's central to the story is the characterizations and the "whodunit" aspect.

[Katherine]

Murders that seem to fit Roz’s literature survey syllabus, as she pinch-hits for a dead professor at a small liberal arts college (with quill pen weathervane, oxidizing stone buildings -- borrowed from Hamilton College?) in Maine. Author teaches at Colby.

[Marti]

Passed on to me by Mom.

[Debbie Maclellan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bring a Dean myself made this book all the more interesting. It is full of sexual innuendos and leaves you guessing until the end

[Michele · Rating 2 out of 5]

This mystery isn't terrible, but is now terribly dated so doesn't read well.

[Sadie Slater · Rating 3 out of 5]

Susan Kenney's 1985 murder mystery, Graves in Academe, is set in a liberal arts college in northern Maine. The heroine, Roz Howard, arrives midway through the first semester of the academic year to provide teaching cover for the English department after the death of one of the senior academics in a grisly accident involving a log-splitter, only to find further "accidents" befalling other members of the department, in ways which seem oddly reminiscent of events from the texts on her syllabus. Finding the local police disinclined to believe this, Roz sets out to analyse the crimes and try to find out who is behind the attacks on her colleagues, and what they have to do with the death of a student a year earlier...

My Head of Department had mentioned Graves of Academe as her favourite campus novel, and gave me a copy when I said it sounded interesting. While, fortunately, my department has not experienced a string of bizarre accidents/murders, the academic politics is certainly very true to life. The murder mystery plot is competently executed, though I did think a couple of the red herrings were very obviously red herrings, and Roz felt frustratingly slow on the uptake sometimes (though then again, she didn't have the advantage of knowing she was in a murder mystery) and more inclined to stumble on the truth by accident rather than actually detecting it. Still, it was entertaining enough, and I didn't guess the identity of the murderer before the final reveal.

It's also interesting as very obviously feminist detective fiction. I was particularly struck by Kenney's reversal of the male-gaziness of a lot of male-POV detective fiction, with several male characters described in a way that clearly demonstrates Roz's physical attraction to them, entirely independently of any romantic attraction; subplots also deal with sexual assault on campus and general sexism in the academic world of the 1980s, where Roz finds herself as one of only two women in a department of eighteen people.