cover image Murder at the MLA

Murder at the MLA

D. J. H. Jones. University of Georgia Press, $24.95 (224pp) ISBN 978-0-8203-1502-7

English instructors and other academics, tenured and not, will howl at the pseudonymous Jones's skewering of the politics of college teaching in this procedural set at the annual Christmastime meeting of the Modern Language Association. Nancy Cook, an assistant professor at Yale, knows she's off the tenure track, so she's at the meeting in Chicago to check out the meat market in anticipation of her next year's job search. Instead, Chicago police detective Boaz Dixon enlists her help in understanding the MLA and its members so he can find the killer who poisoned one professor and who may have murdered another, who fell to his death from a 10th floor balcony. Giving Boaz a contextual understanding of the organization, Nancy explains Deconstuctionalism, new and old literary philosophies, the positions of Tweeds, Trendies and Marxist-materialists and the power struggle among them all. Then another scholar is shot to death, and suspicions tighten on the MLA membership. A little romance spices the narrative, which includes a review course on literary criticism and an illuminating, irreverent inside look at the world of academic politics. (Apr.)