Murder is an Art
Adding to the small but tasty list of mysteries set on college campuses (which includeQuieter Than Sleep,The Northbury Papers, andAmanda Cross: The Collected Stories) comesMurder Is an Art. In this fine novel of academe, Bill Crider introduces us to  Dr. Sally Good, who heads the English and fine arts departments at Hughes Community College near the Texas Gulf Coast. It's the kind of school where the most popular  classes are the ones held in conjunction with nearby prisons, but there are other advantages: the faculty can write articles on Buddy Holly for magazines likeGolden Discinstead of becoming mired in pompous literary  subjects.Murder enters the campus scene when a popular art professor's death is linked to sexual shenanigans and/or Satanism. In typical genre style, it's Dr. Good and her 1950s-loving colleague Jack Neville who put aside minor things like running departments and teaching classes in order to track down the killer. Crider, who clearly knows the terrain, makes his academic community amusing as well as moving.--Dick Adler