Evil: A Novel

"Sex, silence and sin", this is what newly appointed professor, Dee P. Scrutari, writes in her notebook as she turns her anthropological gaze on the tribe of "non-reproducing males" who dominate St Jude's, a prestigious Catholic liberal arts college. Evil is in the air. Something is awry. What happened to the previous occupant of her newly-painted office? Professor Scrutari's fieldwork begins. Her notebooks fill. And the mystery mounts: disturbing odours that no air cleanser will disperse, turbulent faculty meetings, tenure politics, intrigue around women's bodies, and a strange ginger cat. The mix is complicated by secret student alliances, predatory priests, the end of a marriage and new love, an imperious college president, a lumbering dean, a faction-ridden Religious Studies Department, a radical mass and a dissident feminist liturgy.