Student Body: A Benefit Mystery Novella

by Zachary Michael Jack

Sometime love interests, confidants, and intellectual sparring partners, Professor of Leisure Studies Jay Golding and Professor of Anthropology Betsy McPherson have their secure, tenured worlds turned upside down by a visiting professor and an unlikely murder on the pastoral grounds of the thoroughly Scottish, utterly midwestern Forestland College. Thrust into the role of gumshoes in the weeks before graduation, Golding and McPherson race against Assistant Sheriff's Deputy Doreen Simon and Texas private investigator T. W. Polk to crack the case as murders mount and year-end ceremonies loom. The wonderfully twisted mystery that ensues pits professor against professor and student against student, exposing the wooded Forestland campus to the harsh light of the violent world around it. Editor Zachary Michael Jack joins Agatha Award-nominated mystery writers Shirley Damsgaard and Denise Swanson with a host of North Central College notables including Jane Barnes, Rene? Smith Besel, Judith Brodhead, Thomas Cavenagh, Julia Cianci, Jean Clifton, Kendra Hunter, Gary Ireland, Ann Keating, Herb Nadelhoffer, Francine Navakas, Jim Owczarski, Richard Paine, Jonathan Pickering, Jana Tropper, and Ryan Williams in Student Body , a mayhem-filled, charity-designated collaborative mystery for all who ever whistled past the hallowed, haunted grounds of campus.

176 pages, Paperback

First published September 26, 2006

Reviews

[Stefanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This gets an extra star out of my love for NCC. Perhaps someday this book will become the cult classic that a character's novel, Dance of Death, becomes in the book. Also, it sincerely pains me that Naked Came the Manatee is mentioned in the introduction without reference to the novel it parodied (which itself was a parody), Naked Came the Stranger. All that aside, I appreciate the labor of love this was for all involved.

[David Gallagher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm the first person, as it seems, to review this book on Goodreads, so I'll try doing it justice. I'm not surprised no people have read it, since it's a print-on-demand and quite expensive on Amazon and other selected sites. It's a mystery/crime novella written by faculty members, students, alumni and staff of the North Central College as a fund-raising and entertaining experience.

My review of this book is bound to be biased. I'm very close to North Central College and a dear friend of mine wrote one of the chapters (which in my opinion is the best!), being a member of the college faculty.

Zachary Michael Jack has done quite an excellent job of opening, closing, editing and creating cohesion in this book. The two "award-winning" authors who also contributed I think did the worst job.

Story-wise, it's very peculiar. Quite silly, light and fun with no particular aim towards something solid, it can make you laugh, smile and nod, but by any means, this book isn't a masterpiece. I personally like it a lot, because I feel more of an emotional attachment with what lies beneath the actual text.

For all mystery/crime/suspense fans, this is quite an easy and relaxing read. If anything, it's quite intriguing watching how one person's ideas are developed from another person's perceptive.