He's written a dozen educational novels about tax, finance, accounting, even chemistry, and plans to keep churning them out. It's a whodunit about a serial murderer terrorizing major-league baseball, starring an internal auditor and a forensic accountant. A novel is essentially a case study, but the case is 250 pages long. It's not that textbooks aren't good. They're too good.
Textbooks scare people away.
It's a friendly way to teach. Too friendly perhaps, some professors fear. Dan N. Stone, a professor of accounting at the University of Kentucky, has written articles promoting educational fiction. He's even dabbled in it himself. But he worries that all the talk of accessibility and engagement undermines the legitimacy of using plots to promote pedagogy.