Murder Ad Nauseam

About the Book

Fausto Firenze, Dean of the School of Marketing at the University of California, was  having a dinner party at his house in San Francisco to celebrate the publication of a book of essays that he and his colleagues had written.  He went up to make a phone call just before desert was served and twenty minutes later was found murdered, in his study.  The windows in his study were locked and the door was locked from the inside.  How  was he killed?  Inspector Solomon Hunter finds himself investigating this puzzling murder.  His job is made complicated by the fact that each of Firenze’s colleagues and Firenze’s wife had good reason to murder him.  And each of them has nasty things to say about everyone else at the dinner party.  Who is lying and who is telling the truth?  Why do Firenze’s colleagues disagree with one another about everything?    Murder Ad Nauseum is a satire on academic pomposity and self-glorification and, at the same time, has many revelations about the world of advertising.   It is a postmodern work that fuses quotations by scholars about the advertising with a traditional mystery story.  It may subvert the mystery genre while it subverts the reputations of academics.

About the Author

Arthur Asa Berger is professor of Broadcast & Electronic Communication Arts at San Francisco State University, where he has taught since 1965. He has published more than thirty books on popular culture, media, humor and related topics. In recent years, he has taken to writing books that poke fun at academics and universities with books such as Post Mortem for a Postmodernist (AltaMira Press), Die Laughing (iUniverse.com) and The Hamlet Case (Fatbrain.com). He is currently writing a book on video games.