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Popular Culture Review
student and teaching assistant; in the latter, she holds a one-semester replacement
position at an all girls prep school. Although Sarah has a close relationship with
Alex, first her boyfriend and later her husband, she never spends more than part of
each story with him. In Coupe de Grace, for example, he visits only on weekends,
and in Dude on Arrival and A Garden Plot she spends more time visiting or travel
ing with her crazy aunt Julia than with Alex. Alex also gets involved in the myster
ies, at least tangentially, and he occasionally disagrees with Sarah, but otherwise
functions as an expert liaison (he is a medical doctor) or as a sounding board.
Sarah gets involved in detecting because she often finds herself at the scene of a
crime, but also because of her curiosity and a sense of obligation to whichever
community she temporarily belongs.
In The Student Body, the police ask for her help when an ambitious female
undergraduate and a bossy department secretary, both from the English depart
ment, are found dead a few days apart from each other. As a relative insider to
English department pursuits and academic rivalries, and yet an outsider who gets
away with asking lots of questions (when necessary, she explains her curiosity by
saying she is collecting ideas for an academic mystery), Sarah helps solve the
murders by evaluating each of the professors’ teaching styles and recent publica
tions. Most of these pursuits and ideas are her own, and she sometimes puts herself
in danger, but she always remains close to police, and shares ideas with Alex and
friends. In Coupe de Grace, Sarah is again in the characteristic female academic
insider/outsider position: both students and colleagues invite her fresh insights and
trust her with information because she is not a permanent part of the institution.
Sometimes her curiosity and daring get her in trouble, and she doesn’t get along
with everybody (including Grace, the much hated teacher who was the intended
target of the f