Obviously, other novels in the Spenser series must be regarded as related works.

However, two of these in particular deal with corruption and betrayal in academia: The Godwulf Manuscript (1973), the first in the series, in which a pretentious professor, supposedly a champion of the countercul ture, turns out to be a villain, and Playmates (1989), which examines the circumstances surrounding a star basketball player at Taft University who is involved in a point-shaving scandal. Academic politics and the forces that corrupt the university are presented in some detail in that novel: for instance, Spenser discovers that the basketball player cannot read, yet some faculty members are too busy with research to discover this fact. Indeed, the pressures on a younger woman faculty member to publish a book are too strong to make it worthwhile for her to pursue the problems of a student.

Thus the university's surrender...