When Academia Meets the Abyss: Review of H. N. Hirsch's murder in academia mystery, Winter

 H.N. Hirsch's mystery novel, Winter (Pisgah Press, 2025) operates as both an academic mystery and an intimate domestic drama, weaving together the public investigation of the murder of an obnoxious professor with the private crisis threatening a colleague and his long-term relationship The novel's strength lies in its authentic portrayal of academic culture, drawing on Hirsch's extensive experience in higher education to expose the toxic intersection of intellectual ambition, institutional politics, and personal vendettas.

The murder investigation serves as a catalyst for exploring deeper themes of truth, loyalty, and moral compromise. The murder victim, Charles Silver, functions as a complex antagonist whose sexual compulsions and intellectual arrogance create a web of potential suspects, each representing different aspects of academic dysfunction—from career rivalry to administrative corruption to intellectual obsession. The revelation of Silver's HIV diagnosis adds another layer of consequence to his reckless behavior.

Parallel to the mystery, an infidelity subplot provides the novel's emotional core. Hirsch handles this marital crisis with remarkable sensitivity, using grief over a parent's death and fear of aging to explain without excusing betrayal. The therapy sessions and gradual reconciliation feel authentic, avoiding both easy forgiveness and melodramatic dissolution.

The academic setting allows Hirsch to satirize university culture while maintaining respect for intellectual work. The portrayal of faculty politics, administrative bureaucracy, and the pressure for academic advancement rings true without descending into caricature. 

Structurally, the novel balances multiple plotlines effectively, creating a rich family tapestry that grounds the more sensational murder plot. The resolution suggests that truth in both crime and relationships often remains partial and complicated, reflecting the novel's sophisticated understanding of human motivation and institutional corruption.

Links to purchase

Paperback  http://www.amzn.com/B0F64CZK88 

Kindle  http://www.amzn.com/B0F92ZZ8XM

Also available for immediate shipment from Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/winter-h-n-hirsch/1147333399?ean=9781942016960

Moldy Strawberries by Caio Fernando Abreu: Dangerous Self-Knowledge

Abreu, Caio Fernando. Moldy Strawberries. Trans. from the Portuguese by Bruno Dantas Lobato.  Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Press. 2022. 

Caio Fernando Abreu, or Caio F. (as he signed his letters and manuscripts), died in 1996, but was most active in the 70s and 80s, when he first wrote the highly taboo and scandalizing stories.  The stories in this collection, first published in the 1970s and 80s, feel as though they were written yesterday. The descriptions are visceral and unsettling - almost as though one were a large brass cymbal or a gong hanging from cords that continues to vibrate long after being struck with a wooden mallet. His body is your body, and your body is lost somewhere in the collective consciousness of the stories, where desire is mixed with shame, confusion, Dionysian abandon fueled by a seething rage for connection. 

 

Some of the stories, such as “The Survivors,” are experimental in form. "The Survivors" is a 7-page single stream-of-consciousness paragraph that blends art, music, philosophical and psychological ideas with the memories of a relationship that may have just ended (the narrator isn’t sure). What is left is “saudade” - the deep, melancholic longing so characteristic of Brazilian music and literature. I’m not sure which story was the most unsettling, but the one that first comes to mind is “Sergeant Garcia,” the story of a corrupt police officer who arrests adolescent boys and young men to physically and sexually assault, all the while maintaining a charade of hypermasculinity.

Caio F. died in 1996 of AIDS in a Brazil deeply conflicted about homosexuality.  His impact on literature was profound, with the sense of a hand-held movie camera, with jerky quick cuts, somewhere between cinema verite and a tone poem. The collection of short stories opens with a sense of sambas and saudade and ends with classical suite (“Moldy Strawberries” with the sections, Prelude, Allegro Agitado, Adagio Sostenuto, Andante Ostinato, and Minuet and Rondo), that begins with the taste of fruit going bad, but ends with a reflection on the possibility of growing strawberries in one’s own garden. The ending is life-affirming, which is a relief, because through the stories, the reader experienced harrowing encounters in a world that denies gay sexuality, and in doing so, creates cruelty, hypocrisy and obsession.

-- Susan Smith Nash, Ph.D.

 

Susan Smith Nash, Ph.D.