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OINK: A FOOD FOR THOUGHT MYSTERY BY J.L. NEWTON She Writes Press, 2017. $16. 256pp.
Oink, J.L. Newton's first mystery novel and now out in paperback, follows her memoir Tasting Home: Coming of Age in the Kitchen, three single-authored scholarly monographs, and two edited collections in gender studies.
A retired women's studies professor, Newton uses her familiarity with acidemia to craft this campus mystery novel, akin to Jane Smiley's Moo. Set at Arbor State, a public university in California, narrator and women's studies professor Emily Addams finds herself at the center of a poisoning on campus. Peter Elliott, a fellow faculty member whose research is sponsored by agricultural behemoth Syndicon, is found unconscious in the university's pigsty holding a piece of cornbread studded with caramelized onions and goat cheese, Addams' signature bread. The day before the poisoning, Addams had baked a batch...