Beacons of Learning: The Role of the ‘Expert Witness’ and the Place of the New University in Contemporary Crime Fiction

There is a long-standing connection between crime fiction and university cities – particularly Oxford and Cambridge. Dorothy L. Sayers's Gaudy Night (1935), Mavis Doriel Hay's Death on the Cherwell (1935), and Edmund Crispin's The Moving Toyshop (1946) speak to a well-established tradition by the time Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse came onto the scene in 1975. Recently, contemporary crime writer Elly Griffiths has brought the post-92 British universities to the fore by writing a series of novels about a forensic archaeology lecturer and special advisor to the Norfolk police, Dr Ruth Galloway, who is based at the fictional University of North Norfolk. Called upon to share her professional knowledge with police officers, Ruth Galloway is presented as a beacon of learning, making the case for the pursuit of knowledge in a societal context often pitched as anti-intellectual. This article examines the series of binaries presented in university-based crime fiction: the expert versus the plod, the town and gown divide, and in focusing on Griffiths’ novels, the new and the established universities.