TO SAY THAT Professor Lenny Fuller has an irreverent attitude to dusty, unimaginative, uninspiring academia is an understatement. But he carries on handing out his A+ grades to new tranches of anthropology students, one eye set on his students' horizons and the other on his imminent retirement. Meanwhile the university hierarchy has its eyes set on him. So, when he swaps his staid corduroys for hip hop polyester and starts lecturing in explicit rap, the powers-that-be are ready to swoop.

As it happens, Lenny Fuller is too preoccupied with a domestic mystery to worry about his changing employment status. A rather intimate conundrum, possibly involving Julia Roberts, that only gets solved with the help of Juan, the Mexican campus gardener.

Get yourself a copy of the novel that Booker and Nobel Prize-winning author John Coetzee "read with pleasure and amusement", labelling a character in it a "superb creation".

Find out more about the author at www.jonfergusonbooks.com