Academic Mystery as a Genre

The academic mystery novel is simultaneously classified as a subgenre of the classical detective fiction and a subgenre of the academic novel because the criminal investigation, which constitutes the major part of the plot, revolves around university matters. Since the role of the amateur sleuth is typically played by a university professor, he or she frequently displays tendency to reveal more about academia than appears to be necessary to find the culprit. Contrary to what may be expected, in academic mysteries, the university campus peopled by characters focused on pursuing knowledge is not a coincidental crime scene but a place whose history, customs and mores generate numerous incentives for committing different crimes. In other words, the criminal plot is in the academic air and the members of the faculty adopt the roles of the characters essential to the formula of the classical detective story.

Although, on the surface, the chronotope of academic mysteries manifests itself as a university space with its unique time organisation known as the academic year, it is, in fact, a particular place defined and shaped by affective relationships between its dwellers. Dwelling is understood here as “the manner in which mortals are on the earth” (Heidegger 1971: 146), that is, the manner in which scholars exist in the academic environment. Academics’ self-identity is strictly connected to the place where they spend most of their time and strongly identify with, namely, the university. The wide range of emotions, from genuine devotion to deadly indifference, stems from academic characters’ territoriality, which may either enhance the utopian vision of university milieu or provoke different criminal offences, including homicide. This chapter scrutinizes academia as a space whose inherent criminal potential, noticed and explored by the writers of academic mysteries, depends on the social dimension of a university place.

Although murders in actual academic milieux are not legion, one may notice the unceasing production of academic mysteries whose authors provide their fictional academic characters with numerous motives for killing each other.