Tenure

by Kieran Egan

A fun blend of crime thriller and campus comedy.

Saved from certain death on the Whistler-Vancouver highway after his luxury car malfunctions, Mark Morata feels honour-bound to reward his rescuer, Geoff Pybus, with a token of his undying gratitude. Geoff, a frustratingly humble university professor, happy with his family’s lot in life, only wants the impossible: for his modest, straightforward wife to get tenure at her university. Luckily, Mark is a man for whom impossible is just another word. As a sophisticated importer-exporter of certain recreational substances (“drug lord” is such a cliché), Mark gets to work on the academic world with the same relentless nature that helped him climb to the top of the cartel. However, the hallowed campus halls reveal an environment that is vicious and corrupt beyond anything he has ever encountered in the drug business... Kieran Egan’s Tenure is a wildly entertaining satire mash-up, where Don Winslow’s Border trilogy collides with Julie Schumacher’s Dear Committee Members and David Lodge’s campus comedies, and where Richard Stark’s Parker trades barbs with Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim.

Trade Paperback / September 15, 2021 ISBN 10: 1-77439-030-3

ISBN 13: 978-1-77439-030-6

BISAC 1: FIC052000 BISAC 2: FIC016000 BISAC 3: FIC031000 200 pp / 5.5 x 8.5 / $21.95 cdn $17.95 usd

“Filled with delightfully quirky characters, Tenure is an entertaining romp that pits organized crime against the disorganized mob of the academic world.”

~ Norm Boucher, author of Horseplay: My Time Undercover on the Granville Strip

About The Author

Kieran Egan lives in Vancouver, BC. He was born in Ireland, educated in England and the USA, and has worked for many years at Simon Fraser University’s Faculty of Education, from which he recently retired. His work focused on the nature and development of imagination. He has published poetry in Canadian, British, Irish, and USA magazines. He is married with three children and five grandchildren. He enjoys maintaining his Japanese-style garden. In his youth he played soccer and cricket, and did long-jump and triple jump to quite high standards.

ADDITIONAL SALES POINTS

• Book will appeal to those who enjoy humorous thrillers and mysteries, as well as readers who like campus novels with a genre twist.

MARKETING PLAN

• International press release mailout. • Announcement of book’s release by email newsletter and on the NeWest Press Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages. • Podcast reading/interview posted on Apple Podcasts, RSS feed, Facebook, and NeWest website. • Press releases and review mailouts to various CBC outlets across the nation, both radio and television. • Submit to all eligible awards. • Ads in Glass Buffalo, Prairie Books NOW, Prairie Fire, PRISM international, Read Alberta Books (Alberta Views), subTerrain, and the ULS Super Forthcoming Catalogue. • Online Zoom launch, and eventual in-person launches in Vancouver.

MARKETS

• National trade: humorous thriller • US and UK trade: humorous thriller • Vancouver, BC

COMPARISON TITLES

• Foresight: The Lost Decades of Uncle Chow Tung by Ian Hamilton (978-1-487003-99-9, House of Anansi, 2020) • The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow (978-1-400096-93-0, Knopf Doubleday, 2006) • Triggerfish by Dietrich Kalteis (978-1-770411-53-1, ECW Press, 2016)