Female Academic Detectives
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days in the library hunting down possible sources of plagiarized student papers. In
The Mark Twain Murders, she insists that a student’s prizewinning paper, “Tom
Sawyer, an Oedipal adventure: The Case of the Phallic Fence,” was plagiarized.
The fact that its author, Marylou Peacock, was just found dead in the library, doesn’t
deter Beth from her search for the plagiarized source. When her first attempts
(such as a look at Cliff Notes) don’t yield results, she broadens her pursuit in the
main library stacks, where she “[gazed] at the books in dismay. A good eighteen
shelves of Mark Twain! Well - She had to begin somewhere” (110-11). Not even
the suspicious noises and movements she hears one afternoon distract her for long.
Obsessed, she
picked up another book and started serious ‘parallel hunting,’ looking for
repeats of key phrases from Marylou’s essay. After some time, she sighed
and thumped the book shut. As usual, plenty of jargon, some literary and
some psychological, but rather than Oedipal conflict, she had found only
another discussion of an aesthetic conflict within Mark Twain, a battle
between the serious artist and the buffoon. As a writer, the critics seemed
to agree, Mark Twain was a split personality.... Beth.. .pondered the mean
ing of split personality. Did Marylou Peacock have a split personality?
Does a plagiarist have a split personality? What was it like to be a plagia
rist? She tried to imagine someone deliberately choosing to copy, looking
through likely books, deciding on a chapter, stealthily making notes. Or
was it the other way around? Did a plagiarist first look over the books and
then decide to copy? Oh, what did it matter? Get back to it, she told her
self irritably, reaching for another book. Maybe this one would develop
the phallic fence. (116)
Beth’s hunt is first just a case of stubborn obsession, but does become more
altruistic the more she realizes that there must be a connection between Marylou’s
murder, the plagiarized paper, and the book thefts in the library, investigated si
multaneously by FBI agent Gil Bailey.
Beth’s relationship with Gil also betrays her stubborn individualism. The two
are flirting and clearly attracted to each other, and part of her early interest in the
case is probably due to her interest in Gil. But when she asks him for Marylou’s
parents’ number, he tells her not to get involved and accuses her of hubris: “'W hy
don’t you take a sabbatical from plagiarism? Do what other scholars do in the
summer. Study paradigms. Figure out a way to reduce Shakespeare to Morse code’”
(152). Not surprisingly, Beth gets angry and doesn’t speak to him for days, con
tinuing to investigate independently (including, of course, that phone call he didn’t
want her to make). She eventually helps solve the case by putting herself in danger,