Burning Down the House: A Nick Hoffman Novel - Hardcover

"You bought a gun?"

My department at the State University of Michigan at Michiganapolis was not a place where they made mountains out of molehills--they made volcanoes, and you never knew when the next eruption was due.

But despite that combustibility I was still shocked by Juno Dromgoole's announcement when she had me over for dinner on a mild early December night. And so I asked her twice.

"You bought a gun? You really bought a gun?"

Juno nodded and set down her wine glass. "Of course I did. Teaching here is too dangerous. How else can I protect myself?" Having shared this news, Juno calmly took another sip of Kenwood zinfandel.

"But, Juno, don't you think getting a gun is--"

"--what?" she snapped. "Extreme? No it isn't. Not when they mow down professors left and right here."

Of course she was exaggerating, but even though the State University of Michigan at Michiganapolis wasn't quite Bosnia or even the Alamo, Juno definitely had a point. The faculty at SUM had suffered heavier than usual attrition in the past few years through murder, and there really was no way of knowing who was going to become the next dead academic.

How bad was it? Well, if SUM were the Dow Jones index, brokers would be talking about a "market correction."