The Death of a Constant Lover

A Nick Hoffman / Academic Mystery, Book 3 – Mayhem at the State University of Michigan: Is it murder...or another faculty meeting?
Filled with caustic humor about university life and written with literate style and grace, The Death of a Constant Lover escalates Nick Hoffman's involvement with mayhem and faculty meetings. When the son of a professor is murdered on a campus bridge, Nick's presence at the scene puts him right where he can't afford to be: in the middle of trouble. With his tenure review coming up, he's been warned by his department chair to avoid bad publicity.
But Nick is forced to wade in deeper anyway, inexorably drawn into yet another risky investigation in the surprisingly cutthroat world of academia. He may be surrounded by academics with deadly agendas, but he's armed with the hope that his wit and insight will be enough to avert the death of his career... and maybe his own as well.
A Lambda Literary Awards Finalist, this new edition contains a foreword by Brad Shreve (Mitch O'Reilly series) as well as a new introduction by the author.
“Lev Raphael sets his campus mysteries at a factory-like state university in fictitious Michiganapolis, Mich., and populates them with the kind of stupid students and pretentious faculty members who blacken the eye of academia. Happily, he also gives his narrator, a lowly English professor named Nick Hoffman, license to mow down these intellectual pretenders with his scathing wit.” — New York Times Book Review
“Nick's smart-alecky sensibility wedded to his evident love of literature gives this novel its deliciously wicked appeal.” — Washington Post Book World
“...offers some of the most pointed and funny put-downs of academics in my memory [and] shows the kind of growth in characters that you'd expect from someone as smart as Raphael.” — Detroit Free Press

Lev Raphael is the author of 26 books in a dozen genres from memoir to mystery. His first book of short stories Dancing on Tisha B'Av won a Lambda Literary Award. He's published hundreds of stories, essays, articles, and book reviews in a wide range of newspapers, magazines and journals. Lev has won Amelia's Reed Smith Fiction Prize and International Quarterly's Crossing Boundaries Prize for Innovative Prose, awarded by novelist D.M. Thomas, author of The White Hotel. His suspense novel Assault with a Deadly Lie was a Midwest Book Award finalist. Lev's fiction and essays have appeared in over 24 anthologies in the U.S. and England, and are taught at colleges and universities around the country. His fiction has been analyzed in scholarly journals, books, and conferences like MLA. Special Archives at Michigan State University's Library purchased his literary papers and updates them yearly. Lev has reviewed for the Detroit Free Press, the Washington Post and other papers.

Brad Shreve is the author of the Mitch O'Reilly Mysteries: A Body in a Bathhouse and A Body on the Hill. He is also host of the popular author interview podcast, Gay Mystery Podcast. After growing up in Michigan and North Carolina, he currently lives in the Los Angeles South Bay with his husband, Maurice.