ATN at risk

‘Write about what you know.’ This is probably good advice for aspiring writers. Whether it serves equally well for academics turning their hand to prose fiction is put to a severe test by Diane Bell’s first novel. Evil tells the story of an Australian feminist anthropologist who takes up a position at a small Jesuit college in the US. Like many ATNs (Academics Turned Novelists), Bell’s choice of genre is the academic mystery: it is no coincidence that one of the heroine’s favourite writers is Amanda Cross, otherwise known as the feminist critic Carolyn Heilbrun.